Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras, French for “Fat Tuesday,” is the last day of Carnival, the season of feasting that ends when Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. In New Orleans it’s the final, joyful rush after weeks of parades, balls and king cake that start on Twelfth Night, January 6. It lands on a different Tuesday every year, which is exactly why a countdown helps.

Why the date moves

Mardi Gras is set by Easter. Easter is the first Sunday after the first ecclesiastical full moon on or after March 21, and Lent begins 46 days before it, on Ash Wednesday. Mardi Gras is the day before that, 47 days before Easter Sunday, so it can come as early as February 3 or as late as March 9.

Carnival in New Orleans

French colonists brought the feast to the Gulf Coast. The parading tradition in New Orleans began in 1857 with the Mistick Krewe of Comus, and Rex, founded in 1872, gave Carnival its King and its purple, green and gold.

Today dozens of krewes, the clubs that put on the parades, roll through the city in the weeks before Mardi Gras. Masked riders toss beads, cups and doubloons from towering floats, and marching bands play between them. At night, flambeaux carriers light the way with torches, as they did at the earliest parades. On Mardi Gras day itself the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club and Rex roll through the city, and the Black Masking Indians, often called Mardi Gras Indians, come out in suits of beads and feathers they’ve spent much of the year sewing by hand.

Mobile’s claim

Mobile, Alabama, settled by the French in 1702, calls itself the birthplace of Mardi Gras in America. Its Carnival dates to 1703, years before New Orleans was founded in 1718. The city’s mystic societies, secret clubs that began there in the 1830s, still parade through downtown on floats piled high with toys, candy and MoonPies.

Carnival around the world

Wherever Lent is kept, the days before it tend to turn festive. Rio de Janeiro’s samba schools compete in the Sambadrome, a parade avenue designed by Oscar Niemeyer that opened in 1984. Venice fills with masks again each winter, a tradition revived in 1979 after a long absence. In Trinidad and Tobago, Carnival Monday starts before dawn with J’ouvert and carries on through two days of steelpan, soca and costumed bands playing mas. In Britain and Ireland, Shrove Tuesday means pancakes, made to use up the eggs and butter before Lent.

Closer to home, Cajun towns on the Louisiana prairie such as Mamou and Eunice keep the Courir de Mardi Gras. Masked riders go farm to farm, singing and performing for a chicken, rice or sausage, and everything they gather goes into a big communal gumbo that evening.