Note: Nope,
I haven’t forgotten to wrap up the exceedingly epic George Washington series,
but it is, after all, Fat Tuesday and all that means. Mardi Gras or Carnival, call it what you will,
revelers around the world will be out misbehaving joyously. Precisely the kind of libidinous excess that George, always the soul of decorum and dignity, would have abhorred. But we will celebrate today with the classic
re-run.
There are a downsides
to having been raised vaguely Protestant and residing in sometimes inhospitable northern climes.
Perhaps the biggest is regarding with wistful
envy the liberating extravagance of
Carnival and Mardi Gras. It is the un-religious holiday—a day of wallowing in the ways of the flesh and merry making before getting down to the
serious and unpleasant tasks of the proper piety of Lent.
Catholics
seem to know how to take advantage of
the opportunity, especially in warm places where the streets beckon—New Orleans and
Rio de Janeiro most famously.
But folks from countries where Romance languages
are spoken can find ways to celebrate even in icy Quebec City.
The idea is
simple. Finnish up the Christmas
season on the Feast of the Epiphany,
the fixed day of January 11, and
then coast down the hill of Ordinary Time until Ash Wednesday kicks off of Lent, which
by the lunar calendar falls anywhere
from February to March,
gathering speed all the while. It is the “dead of winter.” Even in Mediterranean
countries it was dark and often cold. Folks stayed inside more, got on each others’ nerves. But by Fat
Tuesday, the sap was running and
Spring seemed just over the horizon. Perfect for one last opportunity to bust
loose before breaking out the sack cloth and ashes.
Protestants, particularly Calvinists, their decedents,
and those who stood close enough by
to be infected, took a dim view of the whole process.
More Papist/pagan nonsense to
them. A good Calvinist existed in a state
of perpetual Lent. The experience of any sensual pleasure was regarded as a sinful distraction from contemplation
of the awesome majesty of God
and our totally undeserving souls.
It was for good reason that Puritanism has
been described as the nagging suspicion that somewhere, somehow, somebody is having a good time.
 |
| Members of the British Parliament in a Shrove Tuesday pancake flipping race. Pardon me, but this is a damn poor substitute for libertine excess. |
England, I
am told, once celebrated Carnival—a cultural
gift of the Norman French aristocracy. Cromwell and his boys pretty much wiped that out at the point
of the sword. Even when Kings
remounted the Throne and the Anglican Church regained the upper hand, the old traditions fell away. Instead they shrank the celebration down to something called Shrove Tuesday, which is celebrated
mostly by making and eating pancakes. Now I bow to no man in
my affection for the flapjack or griddle cake, but even a high
pile drenched in butter and real maple syrup is a poor substitute for dancing semi-naked in the
streets. They passed this tradition on to all of the former pink spots on the globe where the Empire once ruled and to
all of the Protestant sects derived from Anglicanism and Calvinism.
Of course, not all Catholics party with absolute abandon. Those from northern and eastern Europe either never celebrated or toned
down Carnival. The Poles celebrate
with Pączki Day (pronounced pŭtch-kē). In the old country
it was held on the Thursday before Ash Wednesday, but in the immigrant
communities of North America it is held on Fat Tuesday. Folks line
up at bakeries at the crack of dawn to purchase pączkis, a
kind of jelly doughnut made only
once a year. This is a much bigger
deal than it sounds on Chicago’s
Milwaukee Ave, the main street
of the Windy City’s Polonia.
 |
| Near riots have been known to break out at certain celebrated Chicago bakeries. Purists denonce the faux Pacziki sold in boxes at supermarkets starting weeks before Fat Tuesday--pretty much ordinary jelly donuts with plenty of preservatives. Only fresh bakery ones served by a grandmotherly lady in a hairnet with a thick accent are acceptable. |
In Germany, the Baltic states, and Scandinavian
Fat Tuesday is likewise celebrated with special local pastries meant to use
up the supply of sugar and lard
before the Lenten fast.
Tonight the biggest and most honored Krews will
be conducting their parades in New
Orleans. Down there, they take Mardi Gras seriously and have
stretched it to the whole season between
the Epiphany and Lent. Various parades have been winding down the streets
of different neighborhoods for
weeks, each followed by its own Ball. The streets of the French
Quarter will be crowded. Many revelers
will be drunken northerners and Calvinist escapees. They will
party next to the locals, drinking copiously, begging for beads cast from the parade floats, and eying the pretty young girls flashing their tits.
Everyone will forget that the Cheeto
in Charge, his Hellfire and damnation Evangelical acolytes, and
the rest of that tribe exist.
A good many of them, in fact, will be at the big party in the Big Easy hoping that TV cameras do not broadcast their participation back home.
 |
| Rio does it right.... |
And I wish I was
with them. It’s been far too
long since I reveled in sin and degradation.
Three years ago Social
Justice Committee of the Tree of
Life Unitarian Universalist Congregation in McHenry was scheduled to dutifully
meet to do its earnest work on
the evening of Fat Tuesday. We were,
after all, the stepchildren of those
old Massachusetts Puritans. As Chair
it was customary for me to open the proceedings with a reflection. Usually it’s a reading I snatched from
the internet. But that bitterly
cold night smack dab in the Winter
that would not end with howling
winds blowing snow dangerously
across the roads, we gathered anyway. I read them this. Fitting
and apt. Sitting
through my poetry ought to be hair
shirt enough for any Puritan.
 |
| The dutiful made it to a church committee meeting on Mardi Grass through the brutal winter of 2014. What were we thinking? |
A Prayer for a
Committee Meeting on Mardi Gras
March 4, 2014
Drudges like us
throw on our heavy coats
and slog through the still arctic
night
to rendezvous around a table
for the earnest business of making
the world
a kinder place
or so we tell ourselves.
We pass the
hours elbow deep
in the common dishwater
of routine and rote,
duty and debate
and adjourn the world not moved
a centimeter from its calamitous
orbit.
But tonight in
the Big Easy,
down in Rio or far off Nice,
any of the warm places
where the evening pulses
expectantly,
they don masks and dance heedless
in the streets.
In timeless
Carnival
the rich and poor,
Black and White,
queer and
straight
alien
and citizen
revel together in absolute equality.
In the common
streets
justice rolls down like bons temps
and righteousness,
the enemy of comity,
is tucked away in a samba dancer’s
thong.
For this one
night there is Joy
and the old world dances to a
coronet.
—Patrick
Murfin
