Mardi Gras: what is it and why do we celebrate it? (original) (raw)
Mardi Gras, also called sometimes Shrove Tuesday, takes place annually on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Christian observance of Lent, which lasts about 6 weeks and ends just before Easter, and this means that it is a moveable holiday that can take place in either February or March.
“Shrove Tuesday” comes from the practice of “shriving”, purifying oneself through confession, before Lent, and for many Christians it is a time to receive penance and absolution.
You’ll sometimes hear even Mardi Gras referred to as “Carnival” even if, technically, this term refers to the period of feasting that begins on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany, and ends on Mardi Gras, and in cities such as New Orleans (U.S.), Rio Janeiro (Brazil), and Venice (Italy), there are week-long festivals leading up to Mardi Gras.
For example, Brazil’s weeklong Carnival festivities feature a vibrant amalgam of European, African and native traditions, in Canada, Quebec City hosts the giant Quebec Winter Carnival while, in Italy, tourists flock to Venice’s Carnevale, which dates back to the 13th century and is famous for its masquerade balls.
Known as Karneval, Fastnacht or Fasching, the German celebration includes parades, costume balls and a tradition that empowers women to cut off men’s ties.
In French, Mardi Gras means “Fat Tuesday”, and no, Fat THURSDAY, born in Poland, is different!
This name comes from the tradition of using up the eggs, milk, and fat in one’s pantry because they were forbidden during the 40-day Lenten fast, which begins the next day (Ash Wednesday) and ends on Holy Thursday (3 days before Easter Sunday).
And so, a big part of Shrove Tuesday is eating an abundance of delicious fried food, especially donuts and Shrove Tuesday Pancakes!
Interestingly, the word “carnival” also comes from this feasting tradition as, in Medieval Latin, “carnelevarium” literally means “to take away or remove meat”, from the Latin “carnem for meat”. During Lent, in fact, Catholics traditionally gave up meat during the Lenten season and mainly ate fish.
In England, where the day is also known as Pancake Tuesday, festivities include activities related to this delicious treats, including the pancake race held by women in Olney, Buckinghamshire, thats dates back to 1445!
According to the legend, the idea started when a woman cooking pancakes lost track of the time and, when she heard the church bells ring, she rushed out the door to attend the shriving service while still wearing her apron and holding a skillet containing a pancake.
But other cultures also cook up rich treats and fried foods. For example, among the Pennsylvania Dutch, the Tuesday is called Faasenacht, sometimes also spelled Fastnacht, meaning “fast night.”
Everyone enjoys the traditional Fasnacht pastry, a rectangular doughnut with a slit in the middle, while in Polish communities, this day is called “Pączki Day,” due the puffy, jelly-filled doughnuts traditionally enjoyed.
In Sweden, the Tuesday is called semmeldagen, semlans dag, or fettisdagen, and locals enjoy a sweet cream bun called semla, while in Louisiana, the favorite treat is the beignet, a pillowy fried dough concoction.
In any case nobody know when these celebrations actually started.
According to Laurie Wilkie, archaeologist at the University of California at Berkeley, Mardi Gras Carnival celebrations started before Christianity as a pagan fertility festival, with some scholars even believe it may have been linked to the ancient Roman pagan feast Saturnalia, which honored Saturn, the god of agriculture, or Lupercalia, another ancient Roman celebration.
However, other research suggests that there is no connection and the customs may come from much older Indo-European spring lore, perhaps the folklore of the Germanic and Slavic races rather than from Greece or Rome.
Either way, once Christianity arrived, pagan celebrations were absorbed into the religious calendar, with the carnival practices in Rome that continued within the framework of the Church.
Moreover, the masked balls of Venice were especially renowned in Renaissance Italy and spread to France and England. In France, they were called les bals des Rois for the kings who presided over the masked merrymaking and, whoever found a coin or a bean in a piece of special “king cake” (named for the Three Kings of the nativity) was named king for the night.
And what about USA?
Well, It was 1699, when French-Canadian explorer Jean Baptiste Le Moyne Sieur de Bienville arrived in the New World about 60 miles directly south of New Orleans, naming this place “Pointe du Mardi Gras” as it was the very eve of the holiday.
He also established “Fort Louis de la Louisiane”, now Mobile, Alabama, in 1702.
Although New Orleans may be most known for Mardi Gras in the U.S. today, the tiny settlement of Fort Louis de la Mobile celebrated America’s very first Mardi Gras in 1703!
Actually Mardi Gras was celebrated in New Orleans soon after the city’s founding in 1718, even if first recorded street parade on this day took place in 1837.
Now a major metropolis, New Orleans is the city most known for its extravagant celebrations with parades, dazzling floats, masked balls, cakes, and drinks!
The masks are, in fact, one of the most popular Mardi Gras traditions, but probably didn’t you know that it’s thought that masks during Mardi Gras allowed wearers to escape society and class constraints to mingle however they wished. A little bit like the traditional Carnival in Schignano, Italy.
But this is another story!
Images from web – Google Research