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Ash Wednesday and Lent
So you filled up on pancakes and delicious food and cleaned the pantry out of all fats and sugars. Then you went and made sure you confessed your sins to make sure you are properly shriven for Shrove Tuesday. Now you are prepared for the long season of contemplation that is Lent beginning with Ash Wednesday.Lent is the forty days, not counting Sundays, prior to Easter. The word comes from the Anglo Saxon word “lang”, which referred to the lengthening of days with spring. [...]
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Mardi Gras
"Carnival is a butterfly of winter, whose last mad flight of Mardi Gras forever ends his glory. Another season is the glory of another butterfly, and the tattered, scattered fragments of rainbow wings are in turn the record of his day. "- PERRY YOUNG: The Mystick Krewe; Chronicles of Comus and His KinI hope everyone has enjoyed my Mardi Gras series. I am going to end it with the actual origins of how Mardi Gras found its way in the United States and how it has progressed.Mardi Gras (French for [...]
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Mardi Gras Throws
We can't talk about Mardi Gras without mentioning the sought after Mardi Gras Throws.Mardi Gras throws usually consist of strings of beads, doubloons, cups, and other trinkets that are thrown or passed out from the floats in the New Orleans Mardi Gras parades to spectators lining the streets. Many other cities have now adopted the custom.The doubloons are usually stamped with the krewes' logos, parade themes and the year, plus an array of plastic cups and toys such as soft footballs, [...]
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The Mardi Gras Float
A Mardi Gras float is a place for krewe members to ride during the parades.Around the mid 1800's Mardi Gras floats were horse drawn carts and wagons. To light the way for the parade, young slaves and free men of color (known as flambeaux carriers) carried torches and followed along with the floats.As the years went on, horses were replaced with trucks and semi tractor-trailers. There can be 20 or more people on any one float at a time. Many krewes choose a new theme and redesign thei [...]
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The Mardi Gras Krewe
A krewe (pronounced in the same way as "crew") is an organization that puts on a parade or ball for the Carnival season.The word is thought to have been coined in the early 19th century by an organization calling themselves Ye Mistick Krewe of Comus, as an archaic affectation; with time it became the most common term for a New Orleans Carnival organization. The Mistick Krewe of Comus itself was inspired by a Mobile mystic society, with annual parades in Mobile, Alabama, called the Co [...]
