New Orleans Mardi Gras

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Revelers, Frenchmen Street, Faubourg Marigny.
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Revelers, Frenchmen Street, Faubourg Marigny.

New Orleans Mardi Gras is Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Louisiana, one of the most famous Carnival celebrations.

The New Orleans Carnival season, with roots in Catholic ritual, starts on Twelfth Night (January 6). The season of parades, balls (some of them masquerade balls), and king cake parties begins on that date.

From about two weeks before, through Fat Tuesday, there is at least one major parade each day. The largest and most elaborate parades take place the last five days of the season. In the final week of Carnival many events large and small occur throughout New Orleans and surrounding communities.

The parades in New Orleans are organized by Carnival krewes. Krewe float riders toss throws to the crowds; the most common throws are strings of cheap colorful beads, doubloons (aluminium or wooden dollar-sized coins usually impressed with a krewe logo), decorated plastic throw cups, and small inexpensive toys. Major krewes follow the same parade schedule and route each year.

While many tourists center their Mardi Gras season activities on Bourbon Street and the French Quarter, none of the major Mardi Gras parades enter the Quarter because of its narrow streets and overhead obstructions. Instead, major parades originate in the Uptown and Mid-City districts and follow a route along St. Charles Avenue and Canal Street, on the upriver side of the French Quarter.

To New Orleanians, "Mardi Gras" refers only to the final and most elaborate day of the Carnival Season; visitors tend to refer to the entire Carnival as "Mardi Gras." Some locals have thus started to refer to the final day of Carnival as "Mardi Gras Day" to avoid confusion.

Revelers, Canal Street.
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Revelers, Canal Street.

Contents

History

Mardi Gras was brought to Louisiana by early French settlers. The first record of the holiday being marked in Louisiana is 1699. The starting date of festivities in New Orleans is unknown, but an account from 1743 notes that the custom of Carnival balls was already established by that date. Processions and masking in the streets on Mardi Gras Day took place, were sometimes prohibited by law, and were quickly renewed whenever such restrictions were lifted or enforcement waned.

On Mardi Gras of 1857 the Mystick Krewe of Comus held its first parade. This was neither (as has sometimes been mistakenly asserted) the beginning New Orleans Mardi Gras nor the first New Orleans Mardi Gras parade, but it did usher in a new era of more organized Carnival festivities. It started a number of continuing traditions, and is considered the first Carnival krewe in the modern sense.

War, economic, political, and weather conditions sometimes led to cancelation of some or all major parades, especially during the American Civil War and World War II, but celebration of Carnival has always been observed in the city.

1972 was the last year in which large parades went though the narrow streets of the city's old French Quarter neighborhood; larger floats and crowds and safety concerns led the city government to prohibit big parades in the Quarter.

In 1979 the New Orleans police department went on strike. All the official parades were canceled or moved to surrounding communities such as Jefferson Parish. Many fewer tourists than usual came to the city. Masking, costuming, and celebrations continued anyway, with National Guard troops maintaining order. Guardsmen prevented crimes against persons or property but made no attempt to enforce laws regulating morality or drug use; for these reasons, some in the French Quarter bohemian community are fond of calling 1979 the city's best Mardi Gras ever.

In 1991 the New Orleans city council passed an ordinance that prohibited spending city funds on police and sanitation for any event held on public streets by carnival organizations that imposed racial segregation in their bylaws. In protest, the old white 19th century krewes Comus and Momus stopped parading. Proteus also suspended its parade that year, but its membership ultimately decided to abide by the council resolution, and Proteus returned to the parade schedule.

Some maintain that membership in the older krewes is not so much racially exclusive as it is "class exclusive" -- that these krewes grant membership only to people from wealthy old-line families, who just happen to be white. Others consider the restricted-membership krewes to reflect ongoing racial, ethnic or religious prejudice.

Today, many krewes operate under a business structure; membership is basically open to anyone who pays dues to have a place on a parade float. In contrast, the old-line krewes use the structure of the parades and balls to extend the traditions of the debutante season in their social circles.

The effect of Hurricane Katrina on future Mardi Gras celebrations remains unknown, but several major Krewes have expressed an intention to proceed with their parades as scheduled.


Contemporary Mardi Gras

Baccus Parade on Magazine Street.
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Baccus Parade on Magazine Street.
Mounted Krewe Officers in the Thoth Parade.
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Mounted Krewe Officers in the Thoth Parade.
Saturn Parade, 1999, with a reference to the Lewinsky scandal.
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Saturn Parade, 1999, with a reference to the Lewinsky scandal.

The parade season starts off some three weekends before Mardi Gras Day with the Krewe du Vieux parade.

There is usually at least one parade every night starting two Fridays before Mardi Gras.

The weekend before Mardi Gras

The population of New Orleans more than doubles with visitors this weekend. Friday night sees the large Krewe of Hermes and satirical Krewe D'Etat parades, as well as small neighborhood parades like the French Quarter Fairy Fey Parade and the Krewe of OAK. Several daytime parades roll on Saturday (including Krewe of Tucks) and Sunday (Okeanos and Toth). The first of the "super krewes," Endymion, parades on Saturday night, with the celebrity-led Bacchus parade on Sunday night.

Lundi Gras

Monday is known as "Lundi Gras" ("Fat Monday"). The monarchs of the Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club and Krewe of Rex (who will parade the following day) arrive on the Mississippi River front at the foot of Canal Street, where an all-day party is staged. Uptown parades start with the Krewe of Proteus (dating back to 1882, the second oldest still parading in the city) followed by the music-themed super-Krewe Krewe of Orpheus on Monday night.

Mardi Gras Day

Celebrations begin early on Mardi Gras Day. Uptown, the Zulu parade rolls first, followed by the Rex parade, which both end on Canal Street. A number of smaller parading organizations with "truck floats" follow the Rex parade.

Numerous smaller parades and walking clubs also parade around the city. The Jefferson City Buzzards, the Lion's Club, and Pete Fountain's Half Fast Walking Club all start early in the day Uptown and make their way to the French Quarter with at least one jazz band. At the other end of the old city, the Society of Saint Anne journeys from the Bywater through Marigny and the French Quarter to meet Rex on Canal Street. The Pair-O-Dice Tumblers rambles from bar to bar in Marigny and the French Quarter from noon to dusk. Various groups of Mardi Gras Indians, divided into uptown and downtown tribes, parade in their finery.

The end of each Mardi Gras

Promptly at the stroke of midnight at the end of Fat Tuesday, a mounted squad of New Orleans police officers make a show of clearing upper Bourbon Street where the bulk of out-of-town revelers congregate, announcing that Mardi Gras is over, as it is the start of Lent.

As Mardi Gras is observed by many New Orleanians who are not Roman Catholic, so too many non-Catholics also follow the custom of giving up certain pleasures, such as chocolate or liquor, for Lent. It is also considered inappropriate and disrespectful to wear Mardi Gras beads during Lent.

Ash Wednesday, the day after Fat Tuesday, is sometimes jokingly referred to as "Trash Wednesday" because of the amount of refuse typically left in the streets by the previous day's celebrations. The tons of garbage picked up by the city sanitation department is a local news item and reflects the economic impact of each year's Mardi Gras.

Costumes and masks

Reveler, Mardi Gras morning in the Bywater neighborhood.
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Reveler, Mardi Gras morning in the Bywater neighborhood.

Costumes and masks are seldom publicly worn by non-Krewe members on the days before Fat Tuesday (other than at parties), but are frequently worn on Mardi Gras Day. Laws against concealing one's identity with a mask are suspended for the day. Banks are closed, and some places with security concerns post signs asking people to remove their masks before entering.

Commercialization

Orleans Parish has laws prohibiting any form of commercial advertising on Carnival parades. Mardi Gras is a traditional holiday, so there is no such thing as an official Mardi Gras product or sponsor, any more than there can be, say, an official sponsor of Christmas. Nonetheless, many merchants sell so-called "official" merchandise to visiting tourists. Some individual krewes do, however, produce an official poster of their organization each year.

Beads

Inexpensive strings of beads and toys have been thrown from floats to parade-goers since at least the late 19th century. Until the 1960s, the most common form was multi-colored strings of glass beads made in Czechoslovakia. These were supplanted by cheaper and less fragile plastic beads, first from Hong Kong, then from Taiwan, and more recently from China. Lower-cost beads and toys allow riders to purchase much greater quantities, hence throws have become more numerous and common.

In the 1990s, many people lost interest in small, cheap beads, often leaving them where they landed on the ground. Larger, more elaborate metallic beads and strands with figures of animals, people, or other objects have become the sought-after throws.

Standards of decency

In the last decade of the 20th century, commercial videotapes catering to voyeurs helped encourage a tradition of baring breasts in exchange for beads and trinkets. Many non-residents now associate this activity more than any other with Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

While standards of what is considered indecent exposure might be relaxed during Mardi Gras, and women showing their breasts to encourage receiving beads is documented since the 1960s, the practice was mostly limited to tourists in the upper Bourbon Street area. Until recent years, New Orleans police tolerated women flashing their breasts in the French Quarter if the display did not cause public disruption, but would arrest people for more explicit nudity. In the last couple of years, however, police have been cracking down on such actions, reasoning that flashing can incite acts of indecency against women who expose themselves.

Outside of the French Quarter, attitudes are much less lenient. While many visiting tourists think of Mardi Gras as an "adult" holiday, for most local residents it is a time of family traditions; indeed, many view the parades mainly as sources of enjoyment for children. Many families with very young children gather along the parade routes Uptown and in Mid City. In these areas, nudity, public drunkenness and other bad behavior is discouraged and could lead to quick arrest.

Traditional colors

Meaning of Colors
Justice (purple)
Faith (green)
Power (gold)

The traditional colors of Mardi Gras are purple, gold, and green. These are said to have been chosen in 1892, when the Rex Parade theme "Symbolism of Colors" gave the colors their meanings. The colors in turn influenced the official colors of Louisiana State University (purple and gold) and Tulane University (blue and green). Before and during Mardi Gras, purple, green, and gold fabric is certainly abundant.

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