Culture
Mardi Gras, and the New Orleans the parades come from
For a few weeks before Lent, New Orleans gives itself over to parades, masks, beads and king cake. Mardi Gras is a city-wide party, but it is also a tradition with deep roots, organised by private clubs and neighbourhoods that spend all year preparing for it.
By Walter Pellow2 November 20264 min read
Mardi Gras means Fat Tuesday, the last day of feasting before the fasting of Lent, which begins on Ash Wednesday. In Catholic Europe, the days before Lent have long been a time of carnival, and the French settlers who founded New Orleans in 1718 brought the custom with them. Today the city's Mardi Gras is the most famous carnival in the United States, a season of parades and parties that builds over several weeks and reaches its climax on Fat Tuesday itself.
The date moves each year with Easter, and Fat Tuesday can fall at any time from early February to early March.
The krewes
The parades of Mardi Gras are not organised by the city but by private clubs called krewes. The first of the modern parading krewes, the Mistick Krewe of Comus, was founded in 1857, and introduced the idea of a themed night procession of floats, lit by flaming torches. Others followed, among them Rex, whose king is the king of carnival, and Zulu, founded by African American workers in the early twentieth century, whose members hand out painted coconuts, one of the most prized throws of the season.
Today there are dozens of krewes, old and new, large and small, from the old-line clubs whose balls are private society events to giant modern krewes such as Endymion and Bacchus, whose huge floats carry hundreds of riders. Each krewe chooses a theme for its parade every year, and its members spend months building and decorating the floats in vast workshops known as dens.
A tradition with deep roots, organised by private clubs and neighbourhoods that spend all year preparing for it.
Parades, beads and king cake
During the final two weeks of the season, parades roll almost every day along the main routes through Uptown and down St Charles Avenue towards the centre. Riders on the floats, masked by law, throw strings of plastic beads, cups, doubloons and toys into the crowds, who shout for them. Marching bands from local schools play between the floats, and the crowds lining the route bring ladders, chairs and picnics and stay all day.
Mardi Gras food has its own traditions. King cake, a ring of sweet dough decorated with sugar in the carnival colours of purple, green and gold, is eaten throughout the season, from Twelfth Night onwards; a tiny plastic baby is hidden inside, and whoever finds it is supposed to buy the next cake.
One of the most remarkable traditions is that of the Mardi Gras Indians, Black Masking Indians, groups from the city's African American neighbourhoods who spend the whole year sewing spectacular suits of beads and feathers, which they wear on Mardi Gras day and on St Joseph's Night in March. Their tradition is said to honour Native Americans who helped people escaping slavery.
Beyond the festival
New Orleans is worth visiting at any time of year. The French Quarter, the oldest part of the city, is a grid of streets lined with houses with iron-lace balconies, mostly built under Spanish rule in the late eighteenth century, after fires destroyed the older French buildings. Jackson Square, with St Louis Cathedral, is its heart. Music is everywhere, above all jazz, which was born here in the early twentieth century, and on Frenchmen Street, just outside the Quarter, the bars play live music every night. The food is a world of its own: gumbo, jambalaya, po'boys, beignets dusted with sugar at the Café du Monde.
The tours
Travelsphere's The Best of the Deep South: Mardi Gras Special Departure, eleven nights, is timed for the festival. It travels from Atlanta through Nashville and Memphis, the home of the blues and of Elvis Presley, to Natchez on the Mississippi and New Orleans, and also visits Indianola and Tupelo, Elvis's birthplace.
Travelsphere's The Best of the Deep South: Nashville, Memphis & New Orleans, eleven nights, follows the same route at other times of year, through Atlanta, Nashville, Memphis, Indianola, Natchez, New Orleans and Tupelo.
Mardi Gras is crowded, and hotels book up months in advance. The weekend before Fat Tuesday is the busiest. For a gentler taste of the season, the parades in the earlier weeks, in late January and early February, are smaller and more relaxed, and very much a local affair.
By Walter Pellow, the name Atlas & Passage’s editorial team writes under. Prices and dates in the trips below come from the operators and can change.
