Happy Twelfth Night...and welcome Carnival season!*

[thatcrazycajun]

Sunday, Jan. 6, marks the 12th and final day of Christmas (last chance to get that drummers drumming order in!), which Catholics and certain other Christian sects know as Twelfth Night, the Feast of the Epiphany or Three Kings Day, when the Wise Guys—err, I mean the Magi finally made the scene at Bethlehem to dig the newborn Christ Child.

But folks in New Orleans and Mobile, among a few other blessed places in the Western world, know it as something else besides: the official commencement of Carnival season, the time of rich young debutantes making the society pages in their finest gowns at tableaux balls (or even getting picked to be a krewe queen or maid!); of king cake parties being hosted all over town each week, often more than one in the same week; and of two weeks' worth of parades in the streets throughout the Crescent City and its suburbs (save for the French Quarter, where full-on parading was outlawed decades ago due to fears for overcrowding the narrow streets and damage to the historic architecture). And even all that is still only prologue, leading up to the Big Day itself: Mardi Gras, when the whole damn city shuts completely down—business, school and government—to get funky and par-TAY! The date this year is Feb. 5. (It always falls 40 days before the date of Easter, if you're wondering why.)

N'awlins' own Arthur Hardy, whose annual Mardi Gras Guide magazine is the authority on local parade schedules, themes and throws as well as the history and background of the celebration so often called "the Greatest Free Show On Earth," has a website here where you can find out more about all this, get other links and order cool stuff, including the Guide itself. And in these post-Katrina days, my adopted home city could sure as Momus use all the help from visiting revelers (and their wallets) it can get to keep the recovery going. So if you can go, consider making your arrangements, like, now. And if not, try to bring a little of that Mardi Gras spirit to wherever you happen to be...even if you live where Mardi Gras is just another ho-hum, workaday Tuesday.

*(Yeah, I know, I'm about half an hour late, but i was busy today!)

Comments

[cellio]

I was once in New Orleans a couple weeks before Mardi Gras (I didn't get to choose the dates). Initially I regretted the timing, but once there I realized it wasn't a one-day event. What a surprise! It was fun.

[ericavdg.livejournal.com]

I'm well aware of Twelfth Night, even though I was raised atheist. My brother was born on January 6 and so we left the tree up until then, took the ornaments off on January 5, and put his cards and little presents on the birthday tree. The next day we took the tree down.