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| It's Mardis Gras in warm places. |
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.
England, I
am told, once celebrated Carnival—a cultural
gift of the Norman French aristocracy.
Oliver 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.
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| Traditional Shrove Tuesday pancake flipping in Britain. |
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 Avenue,
the main street of the Windy City’s
Polonia.
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| 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 Scandinavia 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.
And I wish I was with them. It’s been far too
long since I reveled in sin and degradation.
Five 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.
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| The radical equality of Samba dancers in Carnival in Rio. |
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
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