Mardi Gras Fat Tuesday: A Hedonisitc Holiday

The pagan history of Mardi Gras begins with Dionysus the benevolent giver of fine wine and good food. Parades of grateful singers whose hymns were sung in unison within different sections of the procession answered each other in bawdy chorus to honor the wine-god they released themselves to the hysteria of the euphoric mob. The possessed and raving bacchants, "were in an ecstatic frenzy, through a combination of dancing and drunken intoxication."[1] The party was a whirling dervish of wild cavorting to loud reverberating bells and music.

In the Greek mythology, the orgiastic cult of Dionysus were uncontrollable maenads called the Destructive Ones, crazed enraptured fighting females who roved through the hinterland and would tear apart barehanded their own children and eat them raw.

In Roman times the celebration of Lupercus, Faunus or Satyr is when everybody gave up themselves to the wild nature of Bacchus/Dionysus and Venus/Aphrodite when youths run down the street wearing the flayed skins of sacrificed Billy goats, striking anyone with Februa, thongs made from the flayed goatskin, to insure fertility to the woman. "Noble youths of the magistrates ran up and down through the city naked, for sport and laughter striking those they meet with shaggy thongs."[2] Lupercus was very similar to the winter solstice holiday Saturnalia when everybody's role were reversed and slaves become master for a day and when "peasants would dress up in ridiculous costumes, generally ridiculing their superiors." [3] The fete is akin to the episode of Star Trek's "The Return of the Archons" when Landru, releases control over humans for the Festival. The clock strikes six PM and the released humans go sexually berserk unbounded.

The medieval Catholic church policy of adopting established Roman traditional pagan celebrations and associating these holidays within the dogma of the Catholic Church resulted in Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday as a floating holy holiday that is 46 days prior to Easter Sunday. It is the last day before Ash Wednesday when Lent occurs for the next 40 days. In Latin carnival means "farewell to the flesh," a time of preparation for the Lenten season. Fastnacht in Germany, Eve of the Beginning Fiesta de Las Murgas in Rio de Janeiro Brazil, but however called, Mardi Gras is February 16, 2010.

Shove Tuesday is now Fat Tuesday. Fat Tuesday is the last day to be able to use up fat, eggs and dairy before the fasting and abstinence of Lent begins. The traditional Portuguese pre-Lent food is Malassadas. In Hawaii they are spelled Malasadas. My personal favorite is from Champion Malasadas

Mardi Gras means Fat Tuesday and the biggest Mardi Gras carnival in the United States is the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana. The city that care forgot, the Big Easy, 'nawlins, where boisterous drunken mobs, full of intoxicated woman, are willing to show their breasts to any who would throw junk jewelry, baubles, or tin doubloons at them. Mardi Gras today is an excuse to indulge in extreme abandoned madness that has nothing to do with the religious concept of Shove Tuesday, to "confess all sins."

Resources:
[1] David Wiles, "Greek Theater Performance: An Introduction" Cambridge University 2000
[2] Plutarch, "The Parallel Lives" Loeb Classical Library 1919
[3] Megan Romer, "Cajun Mardi Gras Celebrations" about.com 1.17.2010

Links:
www.associatedcontent.com/article/2559809/the_history_of_the_king_cake.html
www.associatedcontent.com/article/2553595/celebrating_heilige_drei_koenige_epiphany.html
www.associatedcontent.com/article/2544399/all_about_mardi_gras_ash_wednesday.html
classics.mit.edu/Euripides/bacchan.html
depthome.brooklyn.cuny.edu/classics/dunkle/romnlife/luprclia.htmdionysia.org/greek/dionysos/thompson/dionysos.html
forums.egullet.org/index.php?/topic/29987-leonards-bakery-malasadas-honolulu-hawaii/
home.comcast.net/~osoono/ethnicdoughs/malasada/malasada.htm
homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/MAENADS.html
www.mardigrasneworleans.com/