Yeah, yeah, war against Christmas. I got another one for you.
In New Orleans, which holiday is bigger? Christmas or Mardi Gras?
Phfft! It’s Mardi Gras, hands down. Christmas? Maybe you get half a day off from work on Christmas Eve, and then Christmas Day. At Mardi Gras, you get half a day off on Friday (or maybe even the whole day!), because who wants to work when the whole city is going nuts? And then you are off Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday! And maybe even Wednesday, if you want to stretch it to take the religious holiday of Ash Wednesday. Some of the private schools now close for the whole week, to accommodate those families who’d rather go skiing or to the Caribbean and skip the whole thing.
Mardi Gras is a religious holiday, too – my out-of-town church friends spit their coffee across the room at that one, but it’s true; it’s the last feast day before Lent. Monday became a widely recognized holiday some years ago when the city started putting on free outdoor concerts and other activities on Lundi Gras (Monday).
For the last week, the entire city (the news media, anyway) have been obsessing over what the weather will be like on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. The bad news is: it’s gonna rain. The worse news is: it’s gonna rain hard on the big superkrewe parades, Endymion and Bacchus, Saturday and Sunday nights. Booo!! The good news is, the die-hard Endymion parade fans have set up tents on the wide neutral ground (median) on Orleans Avenue so they can watch the parade in the rain. And camp out there to save their prime spots.
One year when I sadly lived Somewhere Else, the church I attended had a special evening event for Mardi Gras. They had a Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper! I kind of watched the whole proceedings with my mouth hanging open. I guess there is some tradition somewhere of eating pancakes on the day before Lent, but the reasoning escapes me. Why a meatless meal BEFORE the beginning of Lent? I don’t get it.
In New Orleans, we do not eat pancakes on the day before Ash Wednesday. We eat king cakes, not pancakes. Also hot dogs, hamburgers, barbecued chicken and ribs, boiled crawfish, jambalaya, and of course one’s favorite beverage in a plastic go-cup. When we go to the parades down on the corner of St. Charles and Napoleon, that smell hanging in the air is not pancakes on a griddle. It’s chicken and ribs on a barbecue grill. My mouth waters just thinking about it.
(For the uninitiated, a king cake is a cinnamon-roll-like ring or oval decorated with purple, green, and gold sugar and icing, sometimes stuffed with a sweet filling. A plastic baby is hidden inside. Whoever gets the baby – supposedly the baby Jesus, as the official first day for king cakes is Epiphany, January 6 – in their piece of king cake gets to buy the next one. Or whatever custom you want to use; it was traditionally used to determine the queen of the first Carnival ball, but the young woman who amazingly got the favored slice was already selected behind the scenes.)
My mother used to say, "Mardi Gras is for children," another saying that makes my out-of-town friends spit their coffee across the room. They think "Mardi Gras" and they picture "Show your wits!" leaning over a balcony on Bourbon Street. But I see extended families on the neutral ground on St. Charles Avenue, the kids up on specially tricked-out parade ladders or on their daddy’s shoulders (as I once was), or running around grabbing for beads being thrown off the floats. Blankets are spread on the ground (or on top of tarpaulins if the ground is muddy), and families are sprawled on them, eating all those things I listed above.
And there’s music everywhere. It comes from the bands, it comes from parade trucks blasting loudspeakers, it comes from boom boxes as people wait for the parades to arrive. A lot of the songs are the classic Carnival standards like "Go to the Mardi Gras," "It’s Carnival Time," and "Mardi Gras Mambo." So much for singing Christmas songs. We’ve got our own, and we know the words, too.
You put a nickel, and I’ll put a dime, and
We can get together now and drink us some wine.
Ah, because it’s Carnival time...
A nickel and a dime? Did I mention these were OLD songs?
Happy Mardi Gras, y’all. Sorry about Christmas. That was so last year.
