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Jan 27, 2021 · The city of New Orleans has issued a number of rules that will take effect on Friday, February 12 until Mardi Gras Day on February 16. All bars will be closed indoor and outdoor across the city, the sale of to-go drinks is banned, and there will be no package liquor sales in the French Quarter.
Mardi Gras (UK: / ˌ m ɑːr d i ˈ ɡ r ɑː /, US: / ˈ m ɑːr d i ɡ r ɑː /; [1] [2] also known as Shrove Tuesday) is the final day of Carnival (also known as Shrovetide or Fastelavn); it thus falls on the day before the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday. [3]
Learn how to make king cake, red beans and rice, and other carnival musts! A three-night celebration from February 12, 13 and 14th with celebrities, musical performances, and fun segments on the history of Mardi Gras.
- Overview
- 1. Its origins can be traced to ancient times
- 2. It goes by many names, including Shrove Tuesday…
- 3. …and Fat Tuesday…
- 4. … and Pancake Day
- 5. Parade floats are organized by tight-knit krewes
- 6. King cake is… king
- 7. America’s oldest Mardi Gras celebration may be found in Mobile
- 8. The holiday takes a toll on the environment
- 9. It’s a time for disguise
Parades, elaborate costumes, and the king of all cakes are all hallmarks of the iconic festival.
From Rome to New Orleans, Mardi Gras is the ultimate carnival.
In fact, it’s the last day of what is known as Carnival season. This period of revelry begins on Epiphany on January 6 and ends 47 days before Easter with the arrival of Lent, a time when many Catholics will forgo meat or make other temporary sacrifices. In 2024, Mardi Gras falls on Tuesday, February 13.
Mardi Gras—just one of the festival’s many names—is marked by raucous parties and parades, revelers wearing elaborate costumes, and delicious foods. Some begin celebrating on the night before Epiphany with a festival known as Twelfth Night. Here’s what you need to know.
The holiday’s roots date back thousands of years to Roman celebrations of fertility and the coming spring season. When Christianity spread through ancient Rome, these festivals transformed to mark the start of Lent.
(Carnival vs. Mardi Gras: What's the difference?)
While Mardi Gras is celebrated around the world, few places are more synonymous with the holiday than New Orleans.
The city has been celebrating Mardi Gras since the 18th Century, when the celebratory period was dominated by formal events like balls. After the Civil War, the city’s economy struggled, and in 1872, Mardi Gras organizers in New Orleans posted flyers at train stations around the country to encourage tourism. The successful tourism campaign continues to attract over a million people to New Orleans every year.
In the Middle Ages, people would use the day to acknowledge their sins in preparation for Lent. At the time, to shrive meant to confess, and so the day ultimately became known as Shrove Tuesday after the past tense of the verb.
Why is Mardi Gras also called Fat Tuesday? Well, it’s simple: in French, "mardi" means Tuesday and "gras” means fat.
The name is derived from the religious origins of the festival. Mardi Gras falls on the day before Ash Wednesday, a day of repentance that ushers in Lent. For many revelers, that makes Mardi Gras their last chance to eat as much meat and fatty foods as they like before entering the season of fasting and abstaining from meat.
In some countries—including the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and Canada—this gluttonous day is also called Pancake Day. In addition to abstaining from meat, the early Catholic Church prohibited people from consuming any other foods that come from “flesh,” including milk, fat, and eggs. So Christians would make pancakes to use up those ingred...
Social organizations called krewes host balls and stage parade floats. Each krewe has a “royal court” with kings, queens, dukes, and duchesses. Some are exclusive to men or women while others are more open.
(7 secrets to celebrating Mardi Gras like an insider.)
One of the most famous krewes is called the krewe of Rex. The all-male krewe has been staging Mardi Gras events in New Orleans since 1872 and are the ones who started the tradition of using the holiday’s famous colors: yellow, purple, and green.
Another famous New Orleans krewe is called Zulu, an all-Black organization that formed when krewes in New Orleans were segregated by race. Their most famous krewe king was Louis Armstrong, who led the krewe in 1949. Zulu started the tradition of throwing party favors toward parade onlookers. Before beads were popular, Zulu threw gold-colored walnuts to their crowds.
Mardi Gras is known for its indulgence—and no food is more ubiquitous in New Orleans during Carnival season than the king cake. This ring-shaped, yellow, green, and white-colored cake is baked with a surprise inside: a tiny figurine of a baby thought to represent the baby Jesus. Whoever receives the slice of cake with the baby inside is named king ...
New Orleans is undoubtedly the modern center of Mardi Gras in America, but historians say the country’s oldest celebration was likely in Mobile, Alabama. They point to travel journals left behind by French soldier and explorer Pierre Le Moyne D’Iberville, who observed a Mass performed on Mardi Gras Day around the turn of the 18th century. Today, th...
Strands of plastic beads are ubiquitous on New Orleans streets during the carnival season. Krewes have been tossing beaded strands to crowds since the 1960s.
Add up all those beads, party favors, drink cups, and decorations, and the city estimates it tosses around 2.5 million pounds of Mardi Gras waste each year. In 2022, the city dumped 1,150 tons of trash into landfills over the course of 11 days.
Groups are popping up to mitigate this onslaught of festive trash. Some organizations make trash pick-up part of the parade, walking alongside floats with receptacles. Others are making beaded necklaces out of biodegradable material.
(Read more about how New Orleans is tackling its Mardi Gras trash.)
Costumes have long been part of Carnival and Mardi Gras celebrations. Carnival in Venice, for example, was inspired by the ancient Roman feast of Saturnalia, during which revelers wore masks to allow for “unbridged entertainment that subverted the social order.”
When Mardi Gras arrived in the U.S., so did this tradition of disguise. According to The Times-Picayune, many of the early Mardi Gras celebrants in New Orleans imported their costumes from Europe. Today, krewe members don masks and brightly colored satin costumes—which “allow the wearer to have fun and get away with gentle mischief,” Louisiana State Museum curator of costumes and textiles Wayne Phillips told the paper.
Jan 25, 2010 · Mardi Gras is a tradition that dates back thousands of years to pagan celebrations of spring and fertility, including the raucous Roman festivals of Saturnalia and Lupercalia.
- 1 min
Feb 17, 2021 · February 17 2021. Mardi Gras 2021 will go down in history as the year New Orleanians came together and turned a sow’s ear into a paper mache purse…and shoe…and giant octopus. In a year when Covid-19 kept the crowds away, locals proved once and for all that Carnival is first and foremost for us.
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Feb 10, 2021 · The rules, in place from 6 a.m. Friday, February 12 to 6 a.m. Wednesday, February 17, range from a citywide bar shut down and ban on to-go alcohol sales, to street closures and fines for...
