ARE YOU CELEBRATING MARDI GRAS?
If so . . . do you know why?
If not . . . why not?
You’ve probably heard of it, and might have even been to a party, ball, concert or event . . . but did you understand what was going on?
In cities & villages scattered around every country & continent on the planet, people celebrate a Holiday that is fairly obscure throughout most of America. It is known to many only via pictures, stories, films & news footage from New Orleans showcasing wild debauchery, flamboyant costumes, and parades.
What many do not realize (including those that travel to New Orleans to celebrate) is that this is a rather ancient Holiday. In more recent history (i.e. the past two centuries in the West), it has been part of the Liturgical Christian Calendar, which organizes the year around the birth, life, death & resurrection of Jesus Christ. Yes, Mardi Gras is a Christian Holiday.
Most of you have probably heard about Christmas (the birth of Jesus) and Easter (the resurrection of Jesus) – but the days leading up to and connecting them have lost their significance in America, and much of the Western world.
The Liturgical Calendar – a variation of the Julian calendar adopted during the Holy Roman Empire – includes Advent, the 4 weeks leading up to Christmas Day (December 25), and beyond. There are Holy Days all year long that we no longer recognize or celebrate. According to this Calendar, Christmas actually lasts for 12 days – The final day being “12th Night” . . . or the 12th Day of Christmas . . . or Epiphany; the day the Magi (or Kings, or Wise Men) found & provided gifts to the newborn King of the Jews. For most people, this day is simply known as January 6th – a time of post-holiday depression and weight loss resolutions – but for others, this day is the kick-off for a fun, raucous, family Holiday season!
Wouldn’t it be nice to eliminate the post-holiday slump and keep the celebration going? All you have to do is change over the Christmas colors from red & green to purple, gold & green. . . and voila – it’s Carnival Time!
There is actually a little more to it than that, with a lot of varied traditions, but just changing your Christmas decorations to Mardi Gras decorations is a good start. Carnival season allows you to celebrate throughout the darkest and coldest time of the year leading up to a big party the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday.
The Liturgical Christian year follows the celebration of Jesus’s birth with a New Year, and a celebration of life. It is a season of joy focused on eating, drinking, parties, parades & masked balls (often supporting charities or causes), and general Joie de vivre. If it’s done right, it takes the best bits of all the other holidays and parades it through the streets – spawning spontaneous dancing, singing and bringing communities, families, churches, businesses & krewes together regardless of age, race, class or culture for the biggest party of the year.
It is known around the world by many names such as Carnival, Mardi Gras, Shrove Tuesday, Fat Tuesday, Shrovetide, Pancake Day, Carnival of Binche, Carnaval de Barranquilla, Masopust, Karneval, Fasching, Martedì Grasso, Carnevale, Carnem Levare, Fettisdagen, Carnaval Ponceño, Užgavėnės, Meteņi, Maslenitsa. It can be elaborate & elegant or over the top & extreme, or bawdy & rude, or family-centered & child-focused, or political & rebellious, or holy & civic-minded, or many other things.
The meaning of the word Carnival comes from the Latin “Carne vale” – meaning ‘flesh, farewell!’ thus describing the Catholic custom of giving up meat for Lent, which begins on Ash Wednesday . . . the day following Mardi Gras or “Fat Tuesday”. In other words, Mardi Gras is a celebration of feasting prior to fasting.
However, most people who celebrate the day have no idea what or why they are celebrating – the same as all “Holidays” (or Holy Days), most are sparkly skeletons of their former sacred glory. But – still, a holiday. A time of joy & celebration.
The weekend before Fat Tuesday is the highpoint of celebration with the best parades and events – but where I live in NE Georgia we call it just Saturday & Sunday . . . Lundi Gras is simply Monday, and Mardi Gras is nothing but another Tuesday. I find this incredibly sad because people could and should be celebrating!
This season (Jan., Feb. & often March) predates Christianity with pagan festivals following the winter solstice; providing a communal feast for people to eat well before the food stores rotted or grew sparse.
Our modern-day Carnival can also be traced to the Greek festivals of Bacchanalia and the Roman festivals of Saturnalia & Lupercalia in which social roles were reversed – rich dressed as poor & poor dressed as kings, men dressed as women & women dressed as men, and norms of desired behavior were suspended or reversed – such themes are still incorporated in Mardi Gras of today.
The Holy Roman Empire incorporated these pagan celebrations into the new liturgical calendar rather than attempting to eliminate them. Such celebrations were also a way to teach the scriptures in an active & direct manner via the celebration and recognition of the life of Jesus.
The church, therefore, transformed the midwinter solstice into Christmas, followed by the season of Carnival wherein all rich food, meat and drink were consumed in a celebration leading up to Lent – a time of reflection and repentance commemorating the 40 days that Jesus fasted in the desert – leading to Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection on Easter during the rebirth of Spring.
Despite Carnival being a “Christian” Holiday, it allowed for a time of excessive debauchery & sin – thus, it was targeted for elimination constantly. The Catholic Church tried to ban celebration which only led to new traditions that grew & morphed throughout the years in each country. It was a rogue holiday through much of history, but always found a way to rally back – even in New Orleans.
During the Middle Ages, those given power, control & wealth via the Church (Kings, Priest, Lords & Barons) realized that the season could be used to great benefit in appeasing & sedating the people. If peasants were allowed to let off steam, sin freely, eat, drink & be merry for one day, it made it easier to control them for the rest of the year. This theme has been reflected in modern fiction from the Star Trek episode featuring a sedate civilization allowed an insane “Red Hour” once a year, to the current “Purge” films.
The Protestant Reformation was a movement to turn Christianity back to the authority of scripture – allowing people to read the Bible in their own language, and pray directly to God rather than ask & pay priests for salvation. Protestant reformers fought against the interpretations, traditions, control & corruption of the Roman Authorities, and wished to eliminate all remnants of the religious holidays established through the Liturgical calendar. The belief was (and still is in several circles) that most “Holy days” had lost their religious significance, and had returned to their original pagan form in all but name.
As Protestants seeking religious freedom & “purity” (i.e. Puritans) immigrated to the new world they established new laws. They outlawed just about everything Catholic, including such things as Christmas, Carnival, Easter & anything that led to dancing. Their acts of reform were attempts to reclaim focus on that which is Holy & Biblical, but they threw the baby out with the bathwater.
I’m sure we’ve all experienced or seen gluttony and/or debauchery during Holiday celebrations – but that’s not a good reason to ruin it for everyone else or make it illegal. All Holidays, parties & celebrations have their good points, their bad points, their excesses, joy, fellowship, splendor or sin – and some are Sacred & Holy, even worshipful – but no one has the right to destroy the joy, traditions or celebration of others for our own righteous indignation. We each have the right to celebrate (or not celebrate) each Holy Day & holiday in our own way – and so it goes with Mardi Gras.
Christmas & Easter were reclaimed as Holy Days throughout the Protestant world, but Carnival & Lent were largely removed from non-Catholic societies . . . one because of its excesses, and the other because of its deprivation.
There is a definite need in our culture to refocus our collective attention upon what’s essential & important rather than the glitter, greed & gluttony that dominates all our acts of celebration . . . but they need to be reformed via art, history & education (as well as the involvement of schools, churches, families & communities) rather than eliminated or avoided due to misunderstanding.
Personally, I think it’s high time we had another reformation to rid our Christian institutions of the same things they targeted in the 16th century! Politics, power, control, money, class, race, nationalism & judgmental ideologies have no place in Christianity or any church . . . and the wide celebration of Carnival in each community would actually help us to refocus! Churches in every community are often separated by denomination, culture and/or dogma which tend to overshadow the primary call, purpose, and message of Jesus Christ that we are all supposedly following.
Christmas is a season where we supposedly forget our differences and come together in celebration – but it has devolved into yet another excuse to wage culture wars. Easter is more about bunnies, eggs, flowers & chocolate than a recognition of the most amazing event ever to occur in human history. We argue about how to celebrate, how to decorate, and what to call the days and seasons rather than join together in communal celebrations.
So, we need a new Holiday – no, actually, we need the old one.
We NEED Carnival season to help us drop our differences and celebrate together! We need this Holy time of communal joy to meet, greet & get along with our neighbors! We need to dance together in the streets! Carnival is about community, the extended and collective family of each individual, as well as erasing the lines between rich, poor, young, old, white, black, etc. and turning the status quo on its head.
Carnival is also essential to the continued development of culture. If it hadn’t been for the Carnival celebrations of old throughout Europe, it is doubtful that formal dance music would have ever been developed. The primary time for dancing was Carnival season during various balls, parties, and parades – and thus, formal musical dance styles were developed for such occasions. The season likewise inspired fashion, art, culture, and many of the tales that have inspired generations. There would not have been a ball for a poor girl like Cinderella to attend and meet & dance with a Prince if it had not been for Carnival. Romeo and Juliet would never have been able to go to the same party (their families hated each other), and meet safely behind masks if it hadn’t been for Carnival. This Holiday season plays a huge part in our cultural imagination even though we don’t realize it.
Mardi Gras in New Orleans is hugely important to the foundation of American culture & music. The myriad cultures that create the fabric of New Orleans would never have been able to dance together in the street if it hadn’t been for Mardi Gras. The Caribbean, Haitian, French, Italian, Brazilian, African and many other international rhythms & melodies came together in the gumbo that changed the beat of the world. These beats were explored during turn-of-the-century Brass band parades with the addition of a shuffled syncopation and ragged time. Mardi Gras in New Orleans was a red hot incubator that allowed the rhythms, styles & grooves of jazz to grow and blossom into every other musical style of today.
Mardi Gras can be a reflection of American culture at its best and most diverse – but why is it only celebrated in a few towns in America . . . particularly New Orleans?
On March 2, 1699, French-Canadian explorer Jean Baptiste Le Moyne Sieur de Bienville arrived at a plot of ground 60 miles directly south of New Orleans and named it “Pointe du Mardi Gras” when he realized it was the eve of the festive holiday, and thus celebrated America’s very first Mardi Gras.
There is also the fact that Mardi Gras was first celebrated in 1703 in Mobile Alabama when French settlers held a celebration at Twenty-Seven Mile Bluff, the first settlement in the city. This is true, and the two cities have fought about it ever since . . . but that’s another story.
The fact that Louisiana spent its formative years under French & Spanish rule, the Puritan purge of all things Catholic did not have much of an effect. Mardi Gras suffered the same excesses it had in Europe, and efforts to ban it continued . . . but I think it has also maintained its “holy” aspects over the years.
Hear me out. . . yes, there is debauchery, but it is also a time for diverse cultures, races, religions, ages, socio-economic groups, and societies to come together. I think such diversity, joy, love & celebration makes our Creator happy! So I fully support the recognition & celebration of Mardi Gras which represents the best of what New Orleans and America have to offer as a civilization.
Over the years many customs & traditions have developed in New Orleans that are unique to the city such as styles of decoration, colors, krewes, royalty, parades, floats, masks, beads, doubloons, throws, king cakes, etc. I won’t go into detail about each of these things – but you should probably do a little research on the foundation & meaning of all these customs if you really want to get the most out of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Once you know this stuff, you can even celebrate it in your own home anywhere in the world (like I do). There are even particular dishes & recipes I would suggest such as jambalaya, gumbo, etouffee, etc. Such information is easily found on the world wide web.
In 1875, Governor Warmoth signed the “Mardi Gras Act,” making Fat Tuesday a legal holiday in Louisiana. It is the only place in America that it is considered a legal holiday – but it is a necessity in every community and corner of the country. We need to come together and have a little bit of fun as part of a greater community than our own four walls.
However, for this holiday to be “Holy”, I’m pretty sure that Carnival season & Mardi Gras have to be followed by Lent . . . a time of personal reflection & self-sacrifice. Without Lent, Carnival is simply a time of unabashed debauchery. Granted, that’s what a lot of people like about it . . . but also why it is not celebrated much more widely throughout every American city. There are many wonderful things to celebrate, but a celebration should always involve some reflection.
Lent is a wonderful Holiday season as well – although it includes a very different type of celebration. It’s a lot quieter. Lent leads up to Easter, lasting for 40 days, where individuals evaluate their lifestyle choices, give up negative habits and seek to commit themselves to something better & bigger than their own desires. It is a time to pray, read the scriptures, renew one’s commitment to God, and refresh one’s personal relationship with the Creator.
We all have a genuine need for communal celebration and unity. There is also a legitimate need for all of us to modify our behaviors to be healthier – no matter what your spiritual beliefs. Carnival allows us a time to come together and let off steam, and Lent allows us the time to think about our life choices and reflect upon where God fits into the hierarchy of things that consume our lives on a day to day basis.
So, I suggest that everyone everywhere celebrates Mardi Gras – dance, sing, eat, drink, be merry, dress up, have fun and hold your loved ones close.
Then, on Ash Wednesday, start on a 40-day journey towards health, reflection, repentance, putting others first, and maybe even shed some tears & some weight in preparation for the hope of Easter to come.
NOLA obsessed 