What is special aboutMardi Gras

By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Columnist

The late historian Buddy Stall once recollected to the author that every year a national TV morning show asked him to speak on Mardi Gras. Repeatedly, year after year, Stall would accept, only to be asked to meet the camera crews for the interview on Bourbon Street.

He would then refuse. The historian would explain that Carnival was about families coming together on parade routes and parties to celebrate one of the most wholesome of emotions – love.

The Mardi Gras season constitutes more than beads, even more than costumes and pageantry. Carnival convenes our sense of community. We New Orleanians gather – young and old, Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Caucasian – to celebrate one another. In this cynical, politically divided time, Mardi Gras remains one of the last symbols of civic joy.

Muses paint shoes for months. Black Indians sew beads for a year. Carnival krewes plan parades five years out. All for free. Commercial sponsorship is even banned on the principal parade route. Every dollar comes as a sacrifice by the participants; every labor finds sole compensation in the joy of the spectators.

Carnival began as a religious holiday, after all. “Farewell to the Flesh,” the season from Epiphany to Lent, transitions the 12th Day of Christmas to the Ashes of Lent. The season continues the celebratory revels of the birth of Christ, only ending with an acknowledgment of his 40 days in the desert on the eve of his greatest of sacrifices. The throwing of beads commenced as a Christmas present to crowds gathered on Twelfth Night; King Cakes once featured crowns to acknowledge the Magri’s gifts to the baby Jesus; and with the breaking of that bread, we chose our earliest carnival monarchs.

So seriously did our forefathers take the carnival holiday that they created a legal king to greet a Russian prince in 1872, and so unexpectedly caused a true former king to bow before our Rex in 1950. Some of the sons of former slaves use the occasion to honor the Native Americans who gave them shelter by donning feathers and beads – as others dress with pride in the costume of their royal African ancestors each Mardi Gras day. Elsewhere, masking is a form of social protest or revolution. In the Crescent City, it becomes an expression of a temporary form of social equality – so dangerous that racists tried to ban the practice in Reconstruction. Their failure to do so proved one of the earliest successes of the Civil Rights Movement.

No amount of hate could rob us of Mardi Gras. So, as you take to the streets for the next week or so for parades and parties, children in hand, don’t just be joyful; be reverent! Look about you, and see the different faces and hues. Gaze upon the rich and the poor side by side. Sidewalk side or neutral ground, note how we become as one.

And try to carry that feeling of unity throughout the year, until the next Rex or Zulu appear.

This article originally published in the February 17, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.