Spring Break History

Panama City Beach, FL -

Like so much in our world, Spring Break originated with the ancient Greeks. As winter would lessen its chill, and thoughts turned to regeneration, rejuvenation, and new birth, Athens's elders noticed that the young people became particularly frolicsome.

Socrates then proposed, and the Greeks adopted, a wild rite to welcome Spring and allow young people to vent their ingrained urges… and Spring Break was born. Immediately thereafter were heard the first complaints that these strange new rites were destructive of morals and caused undue hardship upon the local residents of the seaside towns in which the festivals were held.

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Those making these complaints were quickly rounded up and stoned. A variation of this practice occurs to this day.

In the Middle Ages, after Christianity's triumph over paganism, it was determined that Spring Break should end. There followed many years of turmoil.

Every Spring it would take armed bands of monks and papal legates to stop young people from partying like it was 999.

Then, in 1237, St. Adledkopf proposed a solution- what if the Church co-opted Spring Break? Taking the uninhibited, riotous celebration that Spring Break had become, and turning it into something mannered and decent, alas, turned out to be a pipe-dream.

All attempts at substituting good fellowship and worship for drunken bonhomie and cheap thrills failed.

Other than Mardi Gras in New Orleans, America never really caught the Spring Break bug… until the First World War, when American Doughboys serving in France watched, wide-eyed with wonder, as the Europeans would temporarily halt Spring Offensives, and instead, party.

Miraculously, scantily clad women would appear over the trenches, dancing and prancing about like nymphs… unfortunately, it was discovered that many, if not most, of these "ladies" were in fact men. America's farm boys and day laborers were horrified, and therefore made the phrase "Show us your tits!" a Spring Break staple (which has since been adopted by Mardi Gras).

From 1929 to 1959 America was too busy with a Great Depression, another World War, and the reconstruction of much of the world to seriously party during Spring Break.

It wasn't until the 1960's became "the swinging Sixties" that America truly took to Spring Break. Baby Boomers flocked to the beach in Detroit steel, eager to forget the War, social progress, and exams… and get drunk and get laid. Spring Break was back!