Boat Festival/Tater Day
The annual boat festival held in France celebrates the return of Springtime. Children make miniature boats with candles in them that symbolize the joy of sailing on the “seas of life.” At the end of the day, a great procession ends at the Rhine, where the boats are cast onto the water as everyone makes their wish for the coming Summer months.
Batats (sweet potatoes), brought to the New World by Christopher Columbus, became a dietary staple and one of the primary crops grown in the southern United states, where they are as rampant as the kudzu vine. The small tuber is rich in vitamin A and mainly grown for human consumption in the form of alcohol, flour and starch.
Originally a market where potato slips for Spring planting were sold, Tater Day has been revived as a county fair In Benton, Kentucky, Sweet Potato Day comes complete with a beauty pageant, horse races, carnival games and a flea market. Celebrated since 1843, Tater Day is one of the oldest trade days in the United States.
*Personally note, Benton, Kentucky is about 75 miles away from me. Until here recently, Tater Day was celebrate on April 1st, April Fool’s Day. High school kids and everyone else flocked to Benton. But the Tater Day celebrated there has nothing to do with Sweet Potatoes. It celebrates the good old Irish tater. Now they have moved the celebration from the first to the fourth, fifth and sixth of April. They are trying to get back to the original date Tater Day was first celebrated.*
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