Regally Blonde Toast to Spring

Author: Astri von Arbin Ahlander

Last week was May-day, marking the official leap into the warmer season. But May-day in Sweden, called Valborg, is celebrated on the last day of April. In a land where the sun never rises in the winter and never sets in the summer, the coming of spring is a well-needed return to light (and salvation from the all too common seasonal depression).

In the evening, the traditional Valborg celebration begins with families gathering around a huge bonfire. Quite literally torching the darkness of the passing winter and welcoming the light of the arriving spring by singing into the night. But it is not until the adults and the young children have retired to their beds that the real rites of Valborg begin. All over the country, the biggest parties of the year kick-off with a roar, because the last day of April is also the biggest student holiday of the year.

Needless to say, Valborg is synonymous with incomparable debauchery. The days leading up to it, all major newspapers create a scare, warning of the violence and drunkenness that is predicted to take place. Mothers and grandmothers furrow their brows in worry as youngsters plot. The air shivers with expectation.

Friends who visit my dorm room and look at the framed photos covering every surface inevitably comment on the picture from my high school graduation, "Why are you wearing a silly sailor's hat?" They are referring to the white cap that all Swedish high school seniors wear during the spring.

Valborg is not only the day designating the start of spring, in many places it is also the day that seniors wear their graduation caps for the first time. The white graduation cap has your school and year embroidered across the brim and was, in the days before the intense examinations of former years were abandoned, a status symbol. Though graduating high school is now the norm, the cap remains an important sign of achievement and approaching freedom. Even beyond your high-school years, it is common practice to wear your graduation cap on special occasions, such as Valborg. When Valborg rolled around last week, a couple of the local Middlebury Swedes united to sing around an open fire with a group of American friends. What we were sharing over champagne and firelight was more than the welcoming of spring. We were also bringing our fellow Middkids into the celebration of the unique time in our lives we are currently sharing as openhearted and open-minded students ready to face the world. As I stood there by the fire, a part of me ached for my white cap.

We do not celebrate Valborg the same way in the United States, but May Day nonetheless marks the beginning of the real spring semester at Middlebury, catapulting us into the last weeks of the school year. And this year, I am once again a graduate-to-be. Middlebury seniors may not have any white caps to single us out, but our blood-shot thesis-eyes will have to do to mark us as the ones who are about to face achievement, failure, freedom or panic-pick whichever describes you best. And though there is no single day designated for a pre-graduation celebration, we have a full week of impending festivities awaiting us. So, put on a white baseball cap (one must improvise), pop some champagne and toast the long-awaited spring and your upcoming release from the nurturing bubble that is Middlebury College. The real world approaches. Celebrate your unique status as a student while you can. Now, the curtain descends on our senior year, on our undergraduate careers, and on "Regally Blonde."