Spring break arrives in March for most high school and college students. What has turned into a wild week of sun, parties and sometimes wild behavior didn't start out that way. Here's a look at the origins of spring break and how it turned into the phenomenon it is today.
Time magazine reports spring break may go back to ancient Greece and Rome when people would celebrate spring by having the "rite of spring" when people of a "mate-able" age would relax, play outside in the warm water and then enjoy their bodies.
The festivals of Ostara and May Day might have evolved from such rituals and took on a more religious meaning for some. To many college students, spring break means a week-long party. In that respect, Colgate University can be to blame for the modern day observance of spring break.
Colgate University is in New York, a place often battered by cold weather every winter. When the coach of the swim team needed a place for his athletes to train in 1936, Mark Ingram took them down to Fort Lauderdale, Fla. for a week during Christmas break. One of the swimmers had a father who lived in the city, according to the New York Times.
The coach spread the word to his peers Fort Lauderdale was great for students to go during Christmas or even during the spring due to its warm climate. Fort Lauderdale, and the entire state of Florida, can claim they had the first original spring break in the United States. The city looked to capitalize on the all the free press.
Like migrating birds, more colleges decided to hold winter practices in Fort Lauderdale. It was Florida's first Olympic-size swimming pool and the city was still reeling from the Great Depression. In 1938, 300 swimmers competed in an event called the College Coaches' Swim Forum.
It wasn't until 1959 that national media came down to Florida to see what the fuss was about. Time wrote about how 20,000 collegians took over the entire town and started drinking and partying. Back then, 19 was the drinking age instead of 21. Beaches were full and the city's 63,000 (mostly elderly) residents wondered what to do.
By 1985, over 350,000 people came to Fort Lauderdale during the spring. A year later, MTV got in on the act with their spring break special.
Now, spring break destinations can see upwards of 400,000 extra visitors in the six week period from the beginning of March to mid-April. Mexico, Texas, and the entire Gulf coast swells in population as millions of college and high school students flock to the warmth and get away from everything school-related.
All thanks to the idea of one student whose father knew of a place to go swimming.
William Browning is a research librarian.
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