The Long Road to Mardi Gras 2019 New Orleans
Mardi Gras in southwest Louisiana… it’s a whole dang season, called “Carnival Season.”
Mardi Gras Catechism: Carnival Season always begins on January 6, (The Feast of the Epiphany). Mardi Gras day (French meaning “Fat Tuesday”, also known as Shrove Tuesday) is always on the day before Ash Wednesday. The date for Ash Wednesday changes every year because Easter Sunday is never on the same Sunday each year. Easter can fall on any Sunday between March 23 and April 25. Mardi Gras day always takes place 47 days before Easter. Got that?
In my Yankee thinking, I thought the Mardi Gras parades always happened on Fat Tuesday. Mais non.
Not in this part of the world. There are 50 parades in New Orleans that roll between January 6 (Feast of The Epiphany) and March 5 (Fat Tuesday). Back in the day, the parades used to wind their way through the French Quarter. Then came along Super Krewes that hired tractor-trailers with enough muscle power to haul the Queen Mary, and say goodbye to big parades in the French Quarter.
These big rigs that resemble floating islands roll through the wider streets in Uptown and Mid town. Smaller parades and floats still roll through the narrow streets of the French Quarter.
The level of frivolity, creativity, unconventionality, political lampoon and/or social commentary is evident in just about any parade in the season.
The krewes often adopt a theme for the year. Being New Orleans, there are no sacred cows…the more sacred the cow, the larger the lampoon.
The rest of SW Louisiana is no slouch. There will be hundreds of parades from Slidell to Lafayette to Lake Charles and in every small town in between. There’s a parade in Iota whose population is about the same number of the seating capacity of the Acadiana Center for the Arts in Lafayette.
For research pt at large is going to investigate a few parades in New Orleans this weekend.
On tap Saturday, February 16, Krewe de Vieux, Krewe Delusion
Sunday, February 17, 'tit Rex hint...floats are made out shoeboxes that look like full size floats.
2019 Carnival Madness in full...http://www.mardigrasparadeschedule.com
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