What on Earth is Mardi Gras?
Since arriving here, the most frequent question asked of me by locals has been "So is this your first Mardi Gras?" To which I've repeatedly replied, a tad bashfully, in the affirmative. After this response I'm usually subjected to a loud guffaw and then "I really wish I could be you right now." I'm not exaggerating when I say this has happened at least ten times.
In all honesty, I came to this city knowing very little about the history and intricacies of this historic festival. All I really knew was that there were several days of parading and that each parade was run by something called a 'Krewe.' Obviously this wasn't really good enough and so I've sought about educating myself on this festival and it's traditions and shall hopefully enlighten my tiny pool of readers back in the UK & EU.
Celebrations are concentrated for about two weeks before and through Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday. Which means that the date of each annual Mardi Gras varies from year to year. Usually there is one major parade each day (weather permitting) and the largest and most elaborate parades take place the last five days of the Mardi Gras season (the last one in 2017 being this Tuesday February 28th).
The history of these parades in America pre-dates the founding of the city in 1718, with the first known record of it being celebrated in Louisiana was at the mouth of the Mississippi River in what is now lower Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, on March 2, 1699. The date of the first celebration of the festivities in New Orleans is unknown. A 1730 account by Marc-Antione Caillot describes music and dance, masking and costuming (including cross-dressing). The latter feeling like a distinctly French means of self-expression.
However it wasn't until the early 19th century that Mardi Gras began to take on its more modern form when Bernard Xavier de Marigny de Mandeville, a rich plantation owner of French descent, raised money to fund an official Mardi Gras celebration.
James R. Creecy describes, in delightfully decorous detail, the New Orleans Mardi Gras in 1835 (I've shamelessly lifted this quote and quite a lot of this from Wikipedia)
'Shrove Tuesday is a day to be remembered by strangers in New Orleans, for that is the day for fun, frolic, and comic masquerading. All of the mischief of the city is alive and wide awake in active operation. Men and boys, women and girls, bond and free, white and black, yellow and brown, exert themselves to invent and appear in grotesque, quizzical, diabolic, horrible, strange masks, and disguises. Human bodies are seen with heads of beasts and birds, beasts and birds with human heads; demi-beasts, demi-fishes, snakes' heads and bodies with arms of apes; man-bats from the moon; mermaids; satyrs, beggars, monks, and robbers parade and march on foot, on horseback, in wagons, carts, coaches, cars, &c., in rich confusion, up and down the streets, wildly shouting, singing, laughing, drumming, fiddling, fifeing, and all throwing flour broadcast as they wend their reckless way.'
As with many other things here, it didn't take long for the Americans to appropriate this form of artistic expression. Punk music, EDM, Hispsters, Jazz and Hip Hop can all lay claim to the same fate.
The turning point came when, in 1856, six American businessmen gathered at a club room in New Orleans's French Quarter to organize a secret society to observe Mardi Gras with a formal parade. They founded New Orleans' first and oldest krewe, the Mystick Krewe of Comus. According to one historian, "Comus was aggressively English in its celebration of what New Orleans had always considered a French festival. It is hard to think of a clearer assertion than this parade that the lead in the holiday had passed from French-speakers to Anglo-Americans. . . .To a certain extent, Americans 'Americanized' New Orleans and its Creoles. To a certain extent, New Orleans 'creolized' the Americans."
I like the quote above because it very neatly summarises the very essence of this place. A city with one foot well entrenched in its creole past and another directed towards its ongoing American future.
Some Krewes are more open for membership than others and the membership fees can vary from a few hundred to several hundred thousand dollars. Mardi Gras and its associated parades are essentially run as a group of separate businesses which is why it has been described as 'The greatest free show on earth' by the cities inhabitants. Relatively little public money is spent to make the show happen, given its enormous scale. Which is probably for the best given the paltry state of the city's purse.
During parades, the Krewes throw various detritus out to people along the parade route, including beads, doubloons, and stuffed toys. These all encompass varying forms and have their own unique history relating back to the theme and origins of the Krewe.
The beads, which seem to adorn every tree, house, street lamp, and telegraph pole here, have been thrown since the late 19th century. Originally made from glass and imported from Czechoslovakia, they gradually took on their more prosaic plastic form and production inevitably moved to (you've guessed it) China. In fact, a vast majority of the things thrown out are made there. To combat the economic globalisation of Mardi Gras, many Krewes now personalise and hand make their throws. Procurement of limited edition swag is very much the calling card of a successful parade season here.
It's worth noting that The traditional colors of the New Orleans Mardi Gras are purple (justice), green (faith), and gold (power). All three colors were used by the Catholic Church throughout history and thus continued to be used in relation to Mardi Gras which is Catholic in origin. And if you stare at them together for long enough, they actually begin to look reasonably good. But only reasonably.
Given that I've only experienced a few parades so far, I'm going to describe my more personal experiences of this carnival season in a subsequent post. For now, you can at least digest the much less juicy and salacious history and wait with bated breath for next week's article.