|
|
|
Home
> Events
> Mardi Gras
> Celebration |
Entire extended families stake out prime spots hours in advance — often the same location every year for generations — along each parade route in order to have an up close look at the passing floats and marching clubs and to collect as many 'throws' as possible. Mardi Gras is a time for families to celebrate and spend time together. Many thousands of King cakes, decorated in the official Mardi Gras colors of purple, green and gold — representing justice, faith and power — are devoured each year at Mardi Gras parties.
Parades are planned as much as a year or more in advance by Mardi Gras Krewes who also hold elaborate balls and parties where their King, Queen and other Royalty are announced for the year. The greatest honor is to be named Rex, King of Carnival — public recognition of prominent standing in the New Orleans community.
Some balls are stylized and formal, complete with tableaux performances and royal marches, while others more closely resemble large dinner/dance parties. One party is even held in the Superdome.
Carnival Balls during Mardi Gras are so popular that New Orleans is now one of the country's largest markets for formal wear. Tuxedos and floor-length evening gowns are required attire at many of the most exclusive balls.
The wearing of masks at the balls, in the parades and on the street has evolved with Mardi Gras. In the late nineteenth century, general street masking was seen as a diversion of poor people and African Americans. The reputations of women who disguised themselves on Mardi Gras were questioned.
Considering the raucous nature of Mardi Gras, you might be surprised to learn that the festival has religious roots. Festivities start in New Orleans each year on January 6, the Twelfth Night feast of the Epiphany -- the day, tradition has it, that the three kings first visited Jesus Christ. Mardi Gras, French for Fat Tuesday, is the day-long highlight of the season. While Mardi Gras most certainly has pagan, pre-Christian origins, the Roman Catholic Church legitimized the festival as a brief celebration before the penitential season of Lent. Mardi Gras Day, a legal holiday in New Orleans, is set to occur 46 days (the 40 days of Lent plus six Sundays) before Easter and can come as early as February 3 or as late as March 9.
Mardi Gras is not new. There is evidence that it was being celebrated in New Orleans as early as the 18th century. Mardi Gras was first mentioned in North America in 1699 in the writings of French explorer Pierre le Moyne, Sieur d'Iberville, who camped on the Mississippi River about 50 miles south of the present location of New Orleans. Knowing that the date, March 3, was being celebrated as a holiday in his native France, he christened the site Point du Mardi Gras.
During the next century, the celebration of Mardi Gras included private masked balls and random street
masking in the cities of Mobile, Alabama and New Orleans. By the 1820s, maskers on foot and in decorated carriages began to appear on Fat Tuesday, and in 1837 the first documented procession in New Orleans occurred, but it bore no resemblance to today's carnival.
|
|
