The streamers and confetti
This is the carnival week in Belgium and with the confetti, the serpentine is an essential element to celebrate the carnival with dignity.
The serpentine is a small and thin reel of paper, usually colored, that is used during the holidays, especially the carnival.
We throw it by unrolling it suddenly or we blow inside and it unfolds.
Previously, it was much wider, 1 centimeter and longer from 50 cm to 200 meters!
The serpentine was also called in its spiral or spiral-opera debut.
History
At the origin of the coil, we find the festive re-use of Morse paper strips. It is certainly ends of unusable reels and intended for the trash.
The first known example of this re-employment dates from October 28, 1886. Spontaneous, it took place in New York on the occasion of the inauguration of the Statue of Liberty. The names of these bands in English: Ticker tape, Ticker-tape parade to designate this kind of event where they are launched, whole or fragmented, on the parade of people who wish to honor.
In 1892, during the Paris Carnival, a Paris telegraph employee imitated the New York example. He works at the post office of Paris 47.
It is the post office of the Stock Exchange, at the time most important of Paris, open day and night and connected to the Stock Exchange by an underground. The fact that this employee works on the telegraph of this office in relation to the New York Stock Exchange probably explains the transmission of the idea from the United States.
French authors who speak of the beginning of the serpentine, for their part, completely ignore the American example of 1886 and speak of an invention made by a Parisian telegraphist remained anonymous.
Nowadays, at the Ticker-tape parades in New York, directory debris replaces paper Morse tapes that are no longer manufactured and used.
From its beginnings, the trend of the serpentine is extraordinary in Paris. The massive use made of confetti during the 1891-1914 period of confetti and streamers at the Paris Carnival makes it a true epic.
The manufacture of the coils for Carnival is carried out using a special machine. It wraps the paper on wooden discs armed with circular knives suitably spaced, and which cut the paper, as it winds, in strips of 1 centimeter wide over a length of about 200 meters.
The Parisians in Carnaval throw them through the window of the top of the buildings and from the sidewalks in the trees, making them all "hairy and multicolored".
A little later, Mr. Heisler took a patent for a new spiral coil. It consists of several ribbons superimposed in their bearings; they can be independent or united in some way. Each of these ribbons can be, on both sides, of a similar or different color, your colors will be combined in order to produce the most varied effects.
As early as the 1890s, the Paris authorities pursued and banned the use of serpentines during the Carnaval de Paris. The pretext is that removing them with iron hooks is expensive and will damage the buds and kill the trees.
But Parisians remain attached to their festive tools that they are prevented from using.
In 1939, the serpentine is again authorized at the French National Day in Paris.
The current coil, found on sale, is much thinner and shorter than the original one.
The confetti
These are small rounds of paper that are thrown at the time of certain festivals and especially during the carnival.
Originally, they were dragees.
We do not know where the paper confetti was invented. On the other hand, it is certain that its world-wide launch took place at the Paris Carnival in December 1891. They were used at carnival time in much larger quantity than today. Paper confetti was commonly sold per kilogram. There used to be confetti in scented paper.
Originally, the confetti thrown at the Carnival were kind of dragees. The word confetti means dragees in Italian.
The dragees were species of small dried jams made of fruits, seeds or pieces of bark or roots covered with a very hard and white sugar.
In Italian, one does not say confetti to designate small bits of festive papers but coriandoli whose etymology reminds the coriander seed coated with white sugar that was thrown or offered during the holidays at least since the end of the year XVIth century.
The practice of confetti jellies during the holidays was however abandoned. The explanation given by the Abbé Richard in his description of the Carnival of Rome in 1770 is as follows: a kind of politeness is to throw dragees and dry jams to people he knows or to those we want gratify some attention. But as these dragees were partly lost in the mud or in the dust, it was imagined to make very small plaster and starch, which are heavier and cleaner for the use to which they are employed.
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Another explanation for the abandonment of the dragees is provided by the Magasin Magasin in 1836: the use of these dragees having become too general, it is used today only small balls of chalk or plaster, which is continued only by extension, to give the name of confetti.
The new confetti plaster was baptized in Paris confetti Italian. It was never used in Paris. It was made using a funnel.
Confetti are pellets, colored plaster, the size of a pea. Whoever wants to take part in the battle carries with him his ammunition and, the face protected by a wire fence, the head tightened by a cap, armed with a small shovel which serves to launch the confetti, bravely throws himself into the fray ; then beware of the first who attacks it.
The paper confetti appeared at the Nice Carnival around 1892 under the name of Paris confetti, which indicates its origin. Subsequently and for a very long time, the plaster confetti continued to exist at the Carnival of Nice, in parallel with the paper confetti. It was finally banned in the early 1950s.