Note—It’s a busy time on major religion calendars. As Muslims observe the month of Ramadan with fasting, prayer, and purification, Western Christians will begin their own period of austerity preparation on Ash Wednesday, March 5. That means a final party—a carnival—is celebrated on Fat Tuesday, Mardis Gras. And so we have a two-fer—the second entry for today.
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.
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.
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 night 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 this evening. Many revelers, as always, are 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 sturm und drang, dread, and chaos of this new year. Even a good many MAGA loyalists, Christian nationalist acolytes, and the rest of that tribe will be at the big party in the Big Easy hoping that TV cameras do not broadcast their participation back home.
Kill joy Donald Trump will make his first address to the Joint Houses of Congress for his second term tonight. Mardi Gras partiers will miss it. Given the grim circumstances of the world, it will be a buzz kill for those at home trying to celebrate vicariously. Drinking games like downing shots for every lie or incoherent rant could rival the consumption of the heartiest revelers on Bourbon Street. I will dutifully tune in, but I will wish I was with them in New Orleans. It’s been far too long since the Old Man reveled in sin and degradation.
Eleven 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 was 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 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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