| Mardi Gras History: Carnival & New Orleans
Though its exact origins are subject to debate, the celebration known as Carnival came to be associated with Judeo-Christian tradition. In its earliest usage in medieval Europe, the Latin word carnelevare, from which "carnival" is derived (literally meaning "to lift up" or relieve from "flesh" or "meat"), may have referred to the beginning of the Lenten season of atonement and abstinence rather than the festive holiday customs that preceded Lent. In any case, over time it became established as the season of merriment that begins on the feast of the Epiphany (Jan. 6), also known as Kings' Day or Twelfth Night (it’s the twelfth day of Christmas, the day the gift-bearing Magi visited the Christ child).
Because the day before Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent, was one of feasting—as symbolized by the ritual slaughter of a fatted bull or ox (boeuf gras)—it came to be known as Fat Tuesday or, as the French would say, Mardi Gras. Occurring on any Tuesday from Feb. 3 through March 9, Mardi Gras is tied to Easter, which falls on the first Sunday after the full moon that follows the Spring Equinox.
The climax of Carnival, Mardi Gras is always scheduled 47 days preceding Easter (the 40 days of Lent plus seven Sundays).
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The Boeuf Gras float has become an internationally recognized symbol for Mardi Gras in New Orleans
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Beginning in the 15th century, reform-minded humanists and church fathers sought to suppress and discredit pre-Lenten festivities, which included satirical theatrics, boisterous games and bodily self-indulgence. The reformers began to associate the "sinful" pleasures of Carnival with the pagan materialism and orgiastic sensuality of ancient Greek and Roman rites, such as the Bacchanalia, Saturnalia and Lupercalia. But that didn’t stop Renaissance monarchs and their courtiers from celebrating Carnival in glittering style. In Europe from the 16th century onward, according to Carnival historian Samuel Kinser, secular currents of thought rationalized Carnival as an expression of the occasional need for carefree folly and thus loosened the festival’s ties to the logic of asceticism binding it to meatless Lent. In New Orleans today the religious significance of Carnival is all but completely lost amid the fervent pursuit of escapist fantasy and sensory indulgence.
The religious significance of Carnival is all but completely lost amid the fervent pursuit of escapist fantasy and sensory indulgence.
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When French-Canadian explorer Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d’Iberville, landed on a plot of ground about 70 miles down river from the present location of New Orleans on Mardi Gras, Mar. 3, 1699, he christened it Pointe du Mardi Gras. Iberville’s expedition went on to establish settlements at Biloxi Bay (Mississippi) and Fort Louis de la Louisiane (Alabama), located on the Mobile River a few miles upstream from the present site of the city of Mobile. (Mobile, which calls itself the Mother of Mystics, traces its Carnival tradition to 1704, when Nicholas Langlois founded Societe de Saint Louis, a prototype of the secret societies, or krewes, that would later institutionalize Carnival in New Orleans.)
No records exist of the first Carnival celebrations in New Orleans, which Iberville's brother, Jean Baptiste LeMoyne, Sieur d'Bienville, established as a permanent settlement in 1718. But folklore has it that after he became governor of Louisiana in 1743, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, assisted by a dancing master called Bebe, established society balls and banquets that became the model for upper-class Carnival soirees of later generations. In reality, though, most of the early settlers were too concerned with survival in the brutish colony to devote time regularly to the festivities, and all that can be said for sure is that a Carnival season was established by the time of the Revolutionary War.
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In colonial times, a remarkable ethnic diversity made New Orleans the New World's most exotic and intriguing society but also bred fears and hostilities. The earliest reference to Carnival appears in a 1781 report to the Spanish colonial governing body, the Cabildo, raising concerns about slaves and free people of color masking and mingling while passing through the streets in search of dance halls. Masking by black people was banned, and the prohibition was extended to all masks a few years later.
The descendants of the French and Spanish settlers, who took to calling themselves Creoles, were devotees of music, dance and theatrical amusements. In 1827, thanks largely to petitioning by prominent Creoles, the City Council lifted the ban on masking from January 1 through Mardi Gras. As street masking burgeoned, bands of musicians and ornamented carriages began joining in the processions.
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As did, by the 1850s, gangs of rowdy revelers, who bombarded maskers and spectators with quicklime, dirt and the occasional brickbat. It was against this backdrop, with newspapers lamenting the degeneration of Mardi Gras, that the Mistick Krewe of Comus made its parading debut—with two floats, costumed maskers and brass bands—in 1857.
In a torch-lit procession on the night of Mardi Gras, the Comus krewemen, most of whom were well-to-do Anglo-Americans, were garbed as "The Demon Actors in Milton’s Paradise Lost." Their thematic, meticulously organized street spectacle, and the tableau ball that followed, established a paradigm that would be widely imitated.
A group of businessmen and civic leaders invented a king of Carnival, Rex, in 1872. While Rex and his krewe may have been partly inspired by the anticipated visit to New Orleans of a Russian royal—Grand Duke Alexis Romanov, who witnessed that year’s festivities—their primary motivation was to coordinate the miscellaneous groups that had been informally parading on Mardi Gras and provide a tonic for a South still weary from the Civil War, thereby helping to lure visitors back to the city.
As part of their debut, the Rex crewmen introduced the Carnival colors of purple, green and gold. (Via Rex’s 1892 parade, entitled "Symbolism of Colors," they came to signify justice, faith and power, respectively.)
After Reconstruction, members of a handful of elite Carnival societies—namely Comus, Rex, Krewe of Proteus and Knights of Momus—came to dominate the social and power structure of New Orleans. Except for identifying Rex each year, these "old-line" krewes adhered to a strict code of secrecy—nobody could ever reveal who was behind the masks at the parades or balls. Their debutante queens, however, were featured in newspaper society columns along with the rest of their make-believe courts.
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Mardi Gras Indians identified with Native Americans, because they shared a common experience of subjugation under colonialism
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To be sure, every strata of society has always participated in Carnival. In the post-Reconstruction era, as racial repression intensified, organized groups of black and mixed-race celebrants masking as Indians began to appear on the streets on Mardi Gras. These Mardi Gras Indians, as they came to be known, identified with Native Americans, because they shared a common experience of subjugation under colonialism and because tribes indigenous to Louisiana once provided refuge to runaway slaves. By "masking Indian," they expressed ritual freedom while also providing continuity to African forms of festive merriment.
Originally known as The Tramps, the group changed its name in 1916 to the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club.
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At one time, rivalries among Mardi Gras Indian "gangs" (usually defined by neighborhood) often turned violent. But these days, the competitive aspects of their revelry tend to revolve around singing, dancing and costuming—traditions that have become emblazoned on the aesthetic and cultural consciousness of New Orleans.
Another African-American Carnival institution, which has proven no less enduring than the Mardi Gras Indians, began in the early 1900s with a parade that lampooned the white man's racial stereotypes: participants wore grass skirts and outrageous blackface makeup. Originally known as The Tramps, the group changed its name in 1916 to the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club.
In the early decades of the 20th century, with the festival becoming increasingly important to the city’s tourism industry, new krewes comprised of business and professional men, such as the Knights of Hermes and the Knights of Babylon, appeared. A gradual democratization of Carnival had begun that was in keeping with, if not motivated by, the "Every man a King" spirit of Louisiana politician Huey Long.
But alas, the years following World War II, during which festivities were canceled, saw only dim traces of the artistic splendor that had characterized the Golden Age of New Orleans Carnival in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Floats had become predictable and somewhat drab, typically resembling large, gussied-up baby carriages. Then along came a young artist named Blaine Kern, whose father had built floats for a Mardi Gras krewe—Alla—in the 1930s.
In the early 1950s, the then-captain of Rex, Darwin Fenner (whose father was the Fenner in Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith), dispatched Kern to Europe to study Carnival traditions in Cologne, Nice, Frankfurt, Viareggio and Valencia.
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The floats that upstart Kern subsequently introduced to the streets of the Crescent City were fanciful, if not outlandish: decked out with oversized, vividly colored busts of storybook creatures and characters whose heads turned and whose eyes moved.
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The traditions of gay Mardi Gras got started when the Krewe of Yuga, founded around 1958, held private costume parties where a queen and small tableau were presented. In 1962, the event was held at a private children’s school—and raided by the police. The attendees' names were published in the newspaper.
But despite the scandal, gay balls, which mocked straight Carnival and appropriated it, endured. Indeed, by the early 1980s, before the onslaught of AIDS, there were as many as 15 (there are now 5).
In 1964, Arthur Jacobs, an ex-police officer looking to drum up some business for his French Quarter restaurant, Clover Grill, started a Mardi Gras costume contest called The Bourbon Street Awards.
The Bourbon Street Awards has become a showcase for elaborate costumes, female impersonators and risqué creativity, attracting tens of thousands of spectators and camera crews from around the globe.
The Bourbon Street Awards take place Fat Tuesday around Noon. Although, crowds begin to gather early in the morning to catch a glimpse of the hysterically funny competitors as they strut through the French Quarter.
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Bourbon & St. Anne is the traditional gathering spot for the Gay community during Mardi Gras in New Orleans
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In the late 1960s, entrepreneurs and others not born to the upper crust came together in an effort to promote tourism and broaden the avenues of participation in Carnival. They formed the krewes of Endymion, in 1967, and Bacchus, in 1968.You needed no social credentials to join. And instead of ceremonious balls featuring krewe royalty, these so-called "superkrewes" threw raucous "extravaganzas" with big-name entertainment. Further departing from tradition, their parades boasted celebrity riders and huge, Disney-esque floats. And their unprecedented generosity with throws abetted the appetite of the cheering throngs and made the older krewes seem almost stingy by comparison.
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Many new clubs hit the streets as parading became more affordable—Kern had taken to creating floats and buying tractors to rent out to others. The floats had detachable features so they could be adapted easily to any number of themes. As Carnival became a less exclusive affair, its economic impact on New Orleans multiplied.
The loosening of the old Carnival aristocracy’s grip on the festivities mirrored its diminishing influence in city government. At no time was this more apparent than in 1991, when the City Council moved to require all krewes parading on public streets to accept members regardless of race, gender, handicap or sexual orientation. Previously, as Calvin Trillin observes in The New Yorker, "it had always been assumed that people would celebrate Carnival in their own way, whether it was by riding in the parade or an all-woman krewe or holding a ball-gown contest for men in drag. There was a widespread feeling that applying human-relations-commission rules to Carnival might not only rob it of its oldest parades but sink it altogether."
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A softened version of the law, passed in May 1992, dropped the prohibition against discrimination by gender (not only did some men’s Carnival organizations not want to admit women, but women’s krewes also did not want men). Nevertheless, when the dust settled, Comus, Momus and Proteus had stopped parading (although they went on with their fancy-dress Carnival balls).
After the ordinance controversy, native son musician Harry Connick Jr., along with his district attorney father and others, formed a consciously nonexclusive krewe named after the son of the Greek muse Calliope. Taking over Proteus’ old slot on the night of Lundi Gras (Fat Monday), the Orpheus superkrewe has been a big hit with parade-goers. (After signing a city-mandated affidavit saying there is no discrimination in its membership policies, Porteus returned to the streets for Mardi Gras 2000, rolling before Orpheus.)
Among the more discernable trends in mainstream Mardi Gras parades in recent years: a revival of satrie—thanks to the Krewe of Saturn, along with more recent upstarts Le Krewe d'Etat and the Knights of Chaos—an ever-increasing variety of (mostly customized) throw items, and a willingness on the part of some krewes to let outsiders join the fun—for a price.
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The announcement of the formation the Krewe of America, in the summer of 1997, epitomized the latter trend. The krewe’s aggressive marketing tactics, and the fact that it was taking over the Mardi Gras parading slot once held by Comus, did not go over well with Carnival traditionalists alarmed at what they perceived as a tendency toward "creeping commercialism" in the festivities. In part because Krewe of America never manged to attract much support locally, it folded after the 2000 parade season.
Even though parading krewes come and go, with some falling on hard times, the "official" schedule keeps getting more crowded. During the 12 days and nights that ended on Fat Tuesday 2001, a record total of 28 parades rolled in the section of the city that falls on the east bank of the Mississippi.
While families still flock to the parades, the demographics of Carnival have been changing. Especially in the French Quarter, the festivities have taken on a Spring Break atmosphere, attracting visitors more interested in drunken escapades and flashes of nudity than Carnival’s cultural significance and storied pageantry.
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Mardi Gras After Hurricane Katrina: After Katrina, the stage was set for a Mardi Gras unlike any other. Steeped in meaning and fraught with emotion, it has become a crucial test of the city's ability to recover - and a therapeutic antidote of sorts for what is perceived as a woefully inadequate government response to the disaster. Click here for to read more.
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