| Mardi Gras in the Crescent City
MARDI GRAS, French for "Fat or Shrove Tuesday," is the New Orleans term for the international festival called CARNIVAL.
The latter derives from the Latin carnis (flesh or meat) and vale (farewell) to denote
the start of the Lenten fast in preparation for Easter. Carnival actually dates to the 5th century and a Christian attempt to
replace Roman fertility rites on the coming of Spring, but still retains much of the feasting and frivolity of the pagan
festivities.
Mardi Gras itself may fall anywhere between February 3rd and March 9th, which New Orleanians have used to create a
movable feast of from 28 to 63 days. Events begin with the bal masque of the Twelfth Night Revelers (January 6) and
end at midnight on Mardi Gras evening. The celebrations have actually been a part of our history since the founding of
Louisiana. Exploring the lower Mississippi River on Shrove Tuesday in March, 1699, Pierre LeMoyne, Sieur d'Iberville
named the first water feature he observed flowing into the river "Bayou Mardi Gras." Following the founding of New
Orleans in 1718, its citizens soon initiated all-night Mardi-Gras balls. By 1750, carnival ball gowns and costumes were
being shipped from France, a custom that survived until the 20th century.
Customs and symbols borrowed from the past, but continued to evolve over time. The special Mardi Gras colors of
purple, green and gold for justice, faith, and power and the wearing of masks and costumes in the street and eating of
"king cake" -- all have medieval roots. The creation of social clubs or "Krewes" and organized parades arrived in the city
in 1857 with Comus. Today, "call outs" and "favors" are given by masked krewe members at some 150 Carnival balls,
where kings, queens, and attendants reign for an evening. But Mardi Gras is also a public feast. Neighborhoods come
alive with their own unique social events. The French Quarter turns into a reasonable facsimile of ancient Rome during
the Saturnalia. Hundreds of thousands of visitors line parade routes during the last two weeks of Mardi Gras to catch
treasured "throws," especially beads and metal doubloons.
Among the holding of the public and private archives of the Crescent City are ample resources for the study of Carnival
and Mardi Gras history, customs, and traditions, as well as its ethnography, iconography, and technology. In public
archives are colorful krewe invitations, programs, favors, and insignia; costume and float design records, club histories,
newsclippings, proclamations, correspondence, membership rosters, diaries; kings' and queens' crowns, scepters, and
costumes, band records, police records, oral histories, legal contracts, books, film, thousands of photographs of street
parades, marching groups, revelers in costume, balls, Carnival royalty, and much more. Institutions are listed
alphabetically.
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