Carnivale or Mardi Gras

The 40-day Lent Season starts on February 18 (Ash Wednesday) and ends on April 5 (Easter Sunday). It is a somber time focused on prayers, meditations, fasting (very little food) and abstinence (no food). Europe was a pagan region until it was Christianized. However, Europeans inherited from their Druid ancestors a taste for merry making (Festivities or Fiestas). This combination produced in some places a very creative worldly celebration. It was first noticed in France and then in Venice. It is made one day before Ash Wednesday. It is not a church endorsed/supported fiesta, it is called Mardi Gras. In France, Mardi in French is Tuesday (Martes in Spanish and Tuesday in English). Gras in French is fat. Mardi Gras means you eat and eat as if there is no more tomorrow all the food, sweets, meats, etc. until you literally burst because you know that next day and the succeeding 39 days, it will be famine, fasting and hunger.

Venice during that time was the richest Italian city. Their fiesta a day before Ash Wednesday is called Carnivale from the word Carne meaning meat and Vale, slang for no meat. New Orleans in Mississippi USA before was a French colony. The inhabitants following French tradition observe Mardi Gras. Brazil was a Portuguese colony for 400 years. Its biggest city Rio de Janeiro celebrates the longest, biggest, gaudiest, eye-popping Mardi Gras festival in the world. The New Orleans and the Rio de Janeiro Mardi Gras fiestas are the most popular worldwide.

Easter Sunday or Domingo de Gloria is a joyous Christian fiesta focused on Christ’s Resurrection. In theory, it should be celebrated like Christmas day when Christ was born. Up to 1917, the world’s bongga Easter Sunday fiesta was in Russia’s Christian Orthodox church. The biggest parties and gift giving were not on Christmas day but on Easter Sunday. At 5:00AM on Easter Sunday, all Russian churches are full. The ceremonies start with a cantor twice singing/asking “Is he alive” with the choir saying/answering “No”. On the third Canto, the choir answers loudly HE IS RISEN, then all the bells ring loudly, all the people shout joyfully the equivalent of ALLELUIA many times. “Praise the Lord” clap hands, immediately followed by the orthodox Mass. Breakfast after Mass is the biggest party of the year followed by gift giving. The most expensive beautiful gifts were the golden eggs covered by big diamonds made by French Jewelries Faberge. Mardi Gras is observed only in some places. The Russian Easter Sunday fiesta disappeared after the 1917 Russian revolution.