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- In Chicago, Mardi Gras is celebrated on the last Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. Many people begin celebrating the holiday the weekend before, with parties and parades. Mardi Gras is a time to eat, drink, and be merry. Many people wear costumes and masks, and there is often a lot of dancing.
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Feb 28, 2019 · Starting Friday, you can celebrate Mardi Gras at Shaw’s oyster bar with live music and a New Orleans-inspired menu. The celebration will cap off on Tuesday where the oyster bar will be serving a crawfish boil with potatoes, corn, and andouille sausage for $32 and happy hour half-off oysters. Advertisement.
Feb 7, 2024 · How to celebrate Mardi Gras in Chicago. Mardi Gras is next week, but true revelers know that the celebration has been raging since last month. The big picture: There are tons of parties popping up across Chicago this week. Here are seven to check out.
- Justin Kaufmann
Feb 6, 2023 · Mardi Gras (aka Fat Tuesday, aka Packzi Day) is a celebration of excess that takes place on the day before Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of the Lent. This year, the holiday falls on February 21 and will be celebrated with music, parades, picnics, floats and tons of food.
Feb 12, 2015 · Here are six fun ways to “laissez les bon temps rouler” (let the good times roll) in honor of Mardi Gras on Feb. 17. Bennison’s King Cake. While the King Cake was made famous in New Orleans, this pre-Mardi Gras cake actually has its roots in Epiphany, the religious holiday that represents the Three Wise Men who discovered Baby Jesus.
- 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.
Dec 14, 2022 · In Chicago, Mardi Gras is celebrated on the last Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. Many people begin celebrating the holiday the weekend before, with parties and parades. Mardi Gras is a time to eat, drink, and be merry.
Feb 3, 2024 · Where To Celebrate Mardi Gras In Chicago 2024. By J.P. Anderson | February 3, 2024 | Food & Drink, Feature, Guides, Let the good times roll at these hot Chicago spots to get in the spirit of Mardi Gras.
