Truthfully, my initial image of Mardi Gras was first sculpted by late night television. More specifically, the post 11 p.m. Comedy Central commercials you flip the channel away from when you think your parents are about to open the door. These are the commercials where people tend to use friendly bartering methods to attain highly-praised necklaces, colored purple, green and gold.
Besides the overt carnal aspects of the holiday, I never really understood Mardi Gras.
Occurring on the day exactly before Ash Wednesday, a day celebrating humility and sacrifice, Mardi Gras is the perfect juxtaposed antithesis from party animal Fat Tuesday to repentant and mournful Ash Wednesday.
Celebrated worldwide, Mardi Gras is a day of feasting, partying and letting go. On the holiday, many people dress up in costumes and adorn colorful body paint to better get into the good old-fashioned mood of unorthodoxy. With over one million people travelling to New Orleans, what makes this holiday such an annual touristy eyesore?
The History Channel website traces the Mardi Gras holiday back over 5,000 years ago, stemming from "pagan spring and fertility rites." Mardi Gras was remodeled as a Christian holiday in 1582 as a final day of "debauchery" before Lent.
"The first Mardi Gras celebration [in America] actually took place at a point South of New Orleans ... Mardi Gras actually predates the city of New Orleans. It wasn't until 1872 ... that a parade actually took place on Mardi Gras day," informs the History Channel website.
The day of the first Mardi Gras celebration established many traditions of the holiday that continue today, such as the color scheme, being "purple for justice, green for faith and gold for power," as stated on the infoplease website.
Over the centuries, Mardi Gras has grown in size and style, featuring elaborate floats and performers, the floats delving into the hundreds and the paraders into the thousands. The holiday, also known as Carnivale, can be described as "a multi-million dollar party," as said on the History Channel.
Already, people are planning on floats for 2013, a good idea as "planning, designing and building floats takes most of a year," as stated by the Miami Herald.
Overall, the belief that Mardi Gras is simply a holiday to fling one's shirt in the air and wave it around is false. "In the last decade of the twentieth century, the rise in producing commercial videotapes catering to voyeurs helped encour- age a tradition of women baring breasts in ex- change for beads and trinkets. This is practiced only in very small fragments of where Mardi Gras is celebrated, mostly by visitors rather than locals," states Wikipedia.
So, I guess I was wrong. Mardi Gras apparently isn't a day for nudists' to paradise. Thank goodness. But what keeps people coming back for more (besides food, booze, parties, etc.)? Oh, wait. That's what the whole point of it is. Is that really what can keep a culture together, though? Frenzied chaos and disorderly conduct? Why not?
Mardi Gras might be the best thing that's happened to New Orleans. While one can't turn a blind eye to the heightened crime and alcohol- ism during the frenzy, the positive effects do take precedence, causing this annual holiday to be looked upon fondly, despite any other details.
In the Washington Post, one business owner in New Orleans commented that this year's Mardi Gras "was really great business-wise," though mentioned that the population of drunk custom- ers may have been around 90 percent.
One attendant of the Mardi Gras festivities commented afterwards in the Washington Post, that "After all the fun I had, I definitely needed to come receive ashes and prepare for Lent."
On Ash Wednesday, one church, St. Patrick's, filled around 500 seats along with their pews to attendees ready for christening, reminiscent of children after a sugar high who just want some peace and quiet and rest after all the fun has been had.
In the end, I suppose that what might seem like a strange juxtaposition between one extreme (Mardi Gras) and another (Ash Wednesday) might be a perfect sequence of events, allowing each person to relish in "Laissez les bons temps rouler," (Let the good times roll) before relinquishing to abandonment of excess and disorder and 40 days of self-denial and prayer.
*** This editorial is an opinion stated by the writer and does not represent the views of The Rotunda or Longwood University.
