Lent & Mardi Gras

[Redguard]

Today is Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday), right?

I tried to do some research to get a better understanding of Mardi Gras and the who partying, nudity and beads thing.

I learned a few things and thought it might make a good discussion here.

From what I read, Mardi Gras is kinda like a "stag party" before Lent commences. Since some people give up pleasurable things for Lent (food, smoking, drinking, etc), they'll try to consume as much of it as possible (hence the term "fat tuesday") before the 40 days of Lent begin.

Mardi Gras seems like such a sinful event... at least the way it is portrayed in New Orleans. It seems weird to me that something so sinful could be tied to something holy like Lent.

I wasn't raised Catholic and I only learned about Lent several years ago. I've always been a Christian and knew of Jesus' fast in the wilderness for 40 days, but I had no idea that people celebrated/practised it nowadays and called it Lent.

Okay, now this is starting to sound like a ramble and I have no idea what my original point was...

Rats... maybe I'll edit later. In the meantime, feel free to drop some thoughts/comments on Mardi Gras and Lent (which I believe starts tomorrow).

[muffler dragon]

You think Mardi Gras in New Orleans is raucous, then I suggest you check out Carnival in Europe or Brazil. My understanding is that New Orleans doesn't hold a candle to these two events.

Btw, I agree with your sentiment about how this event could be tied to something religious. And the only thing I can say: you wouldn't find something like this in Judaism.

Regards,

m.d.

[Redguard]

Now that you mention it, I think I've heard about the Brazil festivities... those are pretty raw as well.

[Monica02]

Mardi Gras, as it is practiced in New Orleans and Brazil, is disgusting. I have heard something about having to use up all of the fat and sugar in the house before Ash Wed. and this might have some connectiuon to eating rich foods on Fat tuesday. Sin is never condoned or allowed in Catholic teaching so all of the sinful activities of Mardi Gras are simply that - sin. Fat tuesday is also called Shrove Tuesday (the previous week is called Shrovetide) and this is a time to spiritually prepare yourself for Lent. Mardi Gras is a cultural, not a lirutgical, event and has no place on the liturgical calender.

[theCreator'schild]

I'd like to share this information with you. I dug around and found a little history of how Mardi Gras began. The website where I found this info is based in Louisiana. I personally don't celebrate Mardi Gras, and after reading the origins of it in this article, I know I never will. Brace yourself for some crazy behavior!

Ancient Beginnings

The origins of Mardi Gras goes back some five thousand years to pagan festivals in the Arcadian Hills of ancient Greece. Thankful survivors of the harsh winter months held celebrations of thanksgiving to the gods of nature and fertility that brought back new life in the spring. They sacrificed goats and sprinkled sacrificed blood upon the fields in thanks to the earth for allowing them to endure the feared and dreaded winter. At sundown the priests would chase naked but joyous sinners across the fields of Arcadia and purge the sins from their bodies by flogging them with whips made from the skin of the sacrificed animals. Once the cleansing was completed everyone sat around a fire and partook of the feast of sacrificed goat meat.

As life improved and people had more to be thankful for the more they petitioned the gods for. As the value of their petitions increased the value of their sacrifices also increased. To petition the gods for better crops they threw flower (the symbol for life) upon the fields along with the goats blood. Along with better crops they wanted more fertile animals and women. As their lusts grew the frenzied celebrations grew even to the point of sacrificing of beautiful young virgin women.

Excerpt from : "MARDI GRAS AND BACCHUS"
By: Myron Tassin and Gaspar Stall


The Roman Lupercailis

After the Romans conquered the Greeks they adopted and used Greek pagan celebrations of thanksgiving and rebirth in order to placate the Roman populace. Most Romans had family and loved ones away from home fighting and dying for the empire. They named the celebrations "Lupercailis" and built the colosseum to house the games of the festival.

Priests were in short supply in Rome so all participating were given whips with which to flog each other. It was believed that masking and costume donning got its start from a strange religious group from Gallia that practiced male prostitution as a religious rite. They dressed themselves as female impersonators and offered themselves to Roman revelers in the street for a fee.

The Romans also initiated the tradition of killing a fatted ox, "The Boeuf Gras". The priest took a large ox and washed it carefully in a stream. They placed a crown of gold leaves and bouquets of flowers and ribbons on its forehead. They lead the animal over a grating where it was stabbed to death with a consecrated spear. Its hot blood flowed down through the grating and over the worshipers below. The warm blood flowing over their bodies was said to purify them as it washed away their sins.

Lupercailis grew to thirty days in length with March 25th celebrated as the festival of Joy. On this day most laws were abandoned. Romans could do almost every vice contrived by man was freely and openly indulged in. Women of high position disguised themselves in wigs and costumes and prostituted themselves to strangers in the street. Political leaders of the powerful Senate dressed in female attire and practiced sexual behavior that was particularly unbecoming for men in honorable positions.

The simple expression of appreciation founded by the Greeks had in Rome degenerated into an orgy of lust and pain reaching the lowest depths to which man can sink and still survive.

Excerpt from : "MARDI GRAS AND BACCHUS"
By: Myron Tassin and Gaspar Stall


Christian Italy

With the coming of Christianity the Roman Lupercalia celebrations fell in disrepute. Sex, drunkenness, gluttony and all forms of extreme physical pleasure were identified as sinful. The early church fathers had a difficult time, however, convincing the Romans that feasting, fornication and fun were unimportant. By the fifth century it was concluded that it was necessary to compromise. Many ancient pagan festivals were imbued with Christian names and significance. The Lupercalia was permitted in a modified form as a concession to the needs of the flesh, and was placed just before the period of fasting and penance known as Lent. It was given a new name, "Carnelevamen", or the consolation of the flesh, in hope of casting upon the celebration some glow of spirituality. In about the year 600ad, when Pope Gregory the Great invented the calendar, he fixed the present fluctuating date of Ash Wednesday as the first day of Lent and formally established the day before, "Shrove Tuesday", as the day that would climax three days of feasting and festivals.

The word "Carnelevaman" became "Carnevale" in more modern Italy, and "Carneval" in France and England. Its now commonly accepted definition "farewell to meat", is a rough one if not altogether incorrect. A better definition is "farewell to the flesh". The people occupying the Italian peninsula were no longer Romans and their gods were dead, but it was the Italians more than any other people who kept the Carnival alive.

As in earlier times, the Italians out did themselves. The Martedi Grasso degenerated into a day devoid of all inhibitions, sexual or otherwise. Rape and adultery were commonplace. Masks lent opportunity for crimes of vengeance, spite, greed and jealousy. The harmless children's races on the Corso became contests between older men that often resulted in maiming and mayhem. The throwing of confetti is a wonderful and harmless invention of the period, but, it to degenerated into the pitching of ground red pepper, sand, rotten vegetables and fruit. Finally, many of the unpleasant sports were put to an end by the passing of laws that made the throwing of any object, the carrying of arms, masking as a priest and the desecration of churches punishable by death. A severe penalty, but, it served to render the Carnival in Italy considerably less violent. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the celebrations reached its height of pure romantic beauty in Italy, with the entire population participating. Gigantic celebrations were held in the colosseum and the theaters, streets and other public places were turned over to public merrymaking with a minimum of violence.


Royal France

The great kings of France in the 15th through 17th centuries brought a dominantly Catholic celebration, "The Carnival" to France, staged just before Lent to the celebration.

The opportunities afforded by the "costume" pleased the Bourbons of France, and french taste and wit influenced by the fashions of Venice, Rome and Florence, made the masquerades and carnivals a natural in France. Louis XIV created entire courts of mythological aristocracy. The comedies of Moliere and others of the period came to life during the Carnival. During the season, French society was at its best and most brilliant with spectacular Balls and street processions in which the Boeuf Gras, adorned with garlands and flowers and ridden by a child dressed as cupid was led through the streets. Grotesque parades of huge and fantastic paper-mache animals and monsters also appeared. But, with the revolution came a banning of all masks, costumes and the Mardi Gras Carnival itself. The promenade of the Boeuf Gras and the disguise of the person and face were deemed beneath the dignity of a citizen.

The monarches loved the Carnival and with the return of a monarch in Napoleon came the return of the Carnival. Again the maskers filled the thoroughfares. Urchins, blowing "cornets a 'bouquin", led the way for parades of carriages filled with the Committee of the Butcher Shops, maskers and the Boeuf Gras in his gilded cart with a cupid (chosen now through school competition) astride his back. There were again great Balls that lasted until dawn, and then came the "descente de la Courtille", which continued until all of Paris was a scene of drunken revel and hilarity. The fatted ox, of course, was at last butchered.

Paraphrased from : "Mardi Gras, As It Was"
by : Robert Tallant


Royalty Meets Royalty

Mardi Gras became an important tourist attraction to Louisiana in the later nineteenth century by the intermingling of two desires, 1) the reactionary nostalgia of New Orleans native whites, and 2) the need for diversions by northerners who were prospering in New Orleans after the Civil War while the city decayed around them. In 1872 these desires came together to produce, as if by accident, the creation of "REX" the King of Carnival.

The Grand Duke Alexis Romanov of Russia, after hunting buffalo in the western United States, under the guidance of General George Custer and Buffalo Bill, stopped in New Orleans during the Mardi Gras season before returning to Europe. Inspired in part by the presence of royalty a group of New Orleans businessmen and civic leaders organized a new parade and invented a King of Carnival in the Duke's honor. They named him simply, "REX". Alexis saluted the carnival monarch from the reviewing stands to the delight of New Orleans.

More important than the idea of a monarch symbol for the festival was the political fantasy that resulted. The Rex Parade hastily organized in less than two weeks before the Duke's arrival, issued a flurry of proclamations expressing comic sovereignty over New Orleans. In the situation of the day with a "carpetbag" reconstruction period government, the proclamations carried specific reference and relevance such as a decree on suspension of all taxes.

The King and Queen of Carnival were again honored by real royalty in 1950. The man who had been King Edward VIII, of England, then the Duke of Windsor after his abdication, bowed low to the Mardi Gras monarchs and his Duchess curtsied before the enthroned rulers of Carnival. "LIFE" magazine reported that the Duke and Duchess had set New Orleans in a whirl. They were guided first to the Comus Bal and then to the Rex Bal and were complete conformists in the revelry. New Orleans was bowled over. Apparently so was the Duchess, "Fabulous!" and "Such Fun". She was heard to gasp. Written by: Terri Duhon for the Centaur Advocate 1993

[muffler dragon]

Ahhh... Bacchus. Go figure.

[meequalsbrite]

i go a christian school and last year when the passion came out everyone was making a big deal about lent and ash wednesday... which is today... i learned sooooo much about it that i grew sick of it and didn't do anything for it... but this year i thought i sacrifice something... candy... but yeah... did any of u ppl sacrifice anything?

[MG]

Mardi Gras parades and such are held here on the Gulf Coast as well as NoLA. It's rich history may date back as a modest celebration, but by no means is it so today. Simply put, its a disguise to do ALL the unimaginable things you could think of and do it openly without a second glance from any onlookers! Its embarrassing to say the very least.:sick:

[silk]

As someone from New Orleans I must say that not ALL parades around New Orleans are as graphic as the media and/or Girls Gone Wild make you believe. Living across the river from New Orleans (10 minutes away) I must say that the parades on this side of the river are much more calm and much more family oriented. A lot of people think all Mardi Gras is about sin and nudity, but I've been to Mardi Gras parades in and around New Orleans all my life and it isn't nearly what everyone else makes it out to be.