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Laissez les bon temps rouler
Staff Writer,
02-17-2010
Across Louisiana – and indeed the world – many Roman Catholics will be partying it up today for one last time before entering the season of fasting and sacrifice known as Lent.
The day is officially known as Fat Tuesday (or Shrove Tuesday), but we know it better by its French name – Mardi Gras.
Mardi Gras originated as one of the series of carnival days held in all Roman Catholic countries between Twelfth Night (or Epiphany) and Ash Wednesday; these carnivals had their origin in pre-Christian spring fertility rites. In fact, many of the names long associated with Mardi Gras, like Bacchus, Dionysus, Pan and Demeter, are all old Greek or Roman gods.
On Lundi Gras (the day before Mardi Gras) in 1699, Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville and Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville entered the mouth of the Mississippi River and set up camp at what is now known as Mardi Gras Point 60 miles south of New Orleans. The members of the expedition threw a modest party for themselves, but it in no way resembled what we might today call Mardi Gras.
In 1702, Bienville went on to found the city of Mobile, Ala., which became the first capital of what was then French Louisiana. The very next year, settlers there held the first official North American Mardi Gras celebration – so, yes, the ads you’re seeing on television calling Mobile the “Birthplace of American Mardi Gras” are technically true.
However, by 1723, New Orleans had become the new capital of French Louisiana, and the celebration had moved west with it. (As always, Louisianians threw a much better party.)
As more French settlers came to the area, they brought their own ideas of Mardi Gras with them. While the rich and powerful held their celebrations in style, the peasants and poor people held a different type of celebration – one that lives on locally in the courirs of Grand Marais Elton, Lake Arthur and Iota. The rural Mardi Gras is much more of a mockery of the “city” celebration, as people banded together to share whatever meager supplies they had.
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, actually throws the world’s largest Mardi Gras celebration, but that’s only because Rio is one of the planet’s largest cities. Mardi Gras celebrations are also thrown in countries as diverse as Belgium, Spain, Italy, Columbia, Germany, the Netherlands, Croatia, Canada, Denmark, India and Sweden.
After tonight, Catholics are supposed to enter a period of 40 days of sacrifice, all preparing for the commemoration of the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Have fun tonight (safely, please), but remember the “reason for the season.”
