Dear Reader,

New Orleans is unlike any other city. It is its own unique creation, with its own mixed but undeniable charm.   Flannery O’Conner, the Southern, Catholic author, observed, “If I had to live in a city I think I would prefer New Orleans to any other — both Southern and Catholic and with indications that the Devil’s existence is freely recognized.”

I have been there twice, but neither of my trips overlapped with Mardi Gras.   So I’ve missed out on (i.e. managed to avoid) the most boisterous, flagship extremes.   This year, though, more options are available.   One of the main parades has been canceled but replaced with an app — thus bringing the “Mardi Gras Experience” to your handheld device, wherever that may be.   If you do happen to be physically present, and have $10 for a ticket, another traditional event has been replaced with a “stationary parade”  (I’m a little confused on the concept).

Like everyone else, the people involved are attempting to discern how best to transform culture during these culturally transformative times.  We might do well, though, to look a bit further back and farther abroad.    

The word “carnival,” of course, derives from Latin roots and more or less means to remove or say farewell to meat.  The apparent correlate endorsement of public licentiousness is a (somewhat) recent corruption.  Carnival is, or was, a religiously-inspired period of feasting leading up to the Lenten period of fasting.  It signifies a rich and important para-liturgical expression of folk culture, with countless, colorful, regional expressions in food, drink, costume, and celebration.  The period traditionally stretches about two and a half weeks.  The old Christian calendar has a special rite that actually invites Carnival season — this occurs on Sexagesima, the second Sunday before Ash Wednesday. The height of the season starts on the Thursday before Lent and reaches its apex and festal conclusion on Fat Tuesday — in French, Mardi Gras.  

Though some Carnival traditions are disturbingly bizarre, many lean more toward delightfully ridiculous.  In Germany, priests homilize in verse, and women cut off men’s neckties.  In parts of Italy, children are temporarily liberated from the social taboos normally associated with throwing eggs at people.  In much of the world elaborate costumes are worn, but in Trinidad and Tobago people don old clothes and cover themselves in chocolate.

The  need for such things becomes clearer during lockdown.   Elaborate play, orchestrated frivolity, and the public fraternity of strangers provide an annual, societal pressure-release valve.  Tensions that might otherwise spill into riots can (sometimes) be eased by the humanizing experience of communal celebration.   The name “Carnival” today can conjure up a variety of less-than-ideal images, but as with so many historic practices, in its purer forms Carnival is an example of generational wisdom embedded in the calendar.  Like the regionalism and flavor of New Orleans and other places, it is the sort of thing we ought to recapture and properly celebrate.

Sincerely,