Sept. 20 launched a worldwide party that can only be equated to Madison’s Mifflin Street Block party, New Year’s Eve and St. Patrick’s Day combined: the annual festivals of Oktoberfest. In the event’s hometown of Munich, Germany, the wild partying goes on for two full weeks.

Contrary to its title, Oktoberfest is often held in the month of September and can last through the early days of November.

This year’s celebration in Munich attracted over one million visitors in the first weekend.

Though festivals in the United States have a lot to live up to in comparison to the Munich celebration, most major cities and towns across the country offer their own interpretations of the German revelries.

In Wisconsin, celebrations can be found in Madison, Middleton and LaCrosse.

“We give the people a taste of Munich in Madison,” said Steven Shattuck, Director of Sales at Madison’s Essen Haus German Restaurant. The Sept. 27 Essen Haus Oktoberfest offered a taste of the German life to Madison residents by offering traditional German food, drink and music. The food, although tailored to Wisconsin festival crowd, represented traditional German servings of bratwursts, meatloaves and sauerkrauts. Participants also sampled Oktoberfest “bier” while dancing to German polka and folk music throughout the day.

“We provided the typical German beer-hall atmosphere,” Shattuck said. “Because there were long connected tables, even if you didn’t know those around you, you sat together and got to know each other.”

After introducing themselves, participants were than able to take part in a variety of activities, which included contests in yodeling, nail hammering and keg carrying.

Shattuck also pointed out that Wisconsin boasts the largest number of citizens with some form of German heritage in the nation — 54 percent according to the 2000 National Consensus.

Judging from the number of lederhosen and dirndl dresses sported at the Essen Haus celebration, Shattuck concluded that, “there is a strong group of people in Wisconsin that are still proud of their German heritage and celebrate it willingly.”

German native Joe Sepp Oberle, a civil engineer at the Illinois Department of Transportation, feels that the meaning of Oktoberfest is to have a good time with your friends, regardless of one’s heritage or profession. Oberle has been to several Oktoberfests across the nation, including those in Wisconsin.

“Besides honoring a Catholic holiday, it is all about the dancing, romancing and shmoozing with loved ones,” Oberle said. “The meaning of the festival’s traditional song, ‘Ein Prosit der Gemuetlichkeit’ can be interpreted as a ‘Toast to the Good Life.”

For those who missed the celebration at the Essen Haus, the Capital Brewery in Middleton will be celebrating their Oktoberfest Oct. 2 to Oct. 4. They will also offer traditional German food, music and drink and host a variety of customary Beer Garden competitions.

University of Wisconsin junior Sarah Hjersjo recently attended the Oktoberfest celebration in Lacrosse, Wis.

“It was like Mifflin Street Block Party,” Hjersjo said. “[And though] I am not a German, I definitely drank and celebrated like [I was] one.”

The Oktoberfest tradition began Oct. 12, 1810, to celebrate the wedding of the Bavarian prince Ludwig to princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen. Five days later, the German National Guard organized a horse-race celebration for the Bavarian people to partake in. The occasion was repeatedly honored during the following years, thus spawning a celebration of German food, drink and music, known today as “October-Festivals” or Oktoberfest.

Nowadays, the celebration of Oktoberfest has spread across the globe, and people can often find official celebrations right in their hometown. These local festivals still have a hard time living up to the ultimate party in the festival’s birthplace, though.

Traditionally, the Oktoberfest celebration cannot begin until the mayor of Munich shouts “O’zapft is,” which signals that he has tapped the first keg of beer. Following the mayor’s cry, the rowdy and thirsty masses are then free to indulge in the nation’s best selections of chicken, pork, oxen and, of course, beer and wine.

Parades of marching bands and horse carriages from Munich’s most prominent breweries mix in with swarms of people dressed in traditional lederhosen and dirndl dresses, formerly worn by mountain shepherds and their wives.