mardi gras
mardi gras
French
“Mardi Gras literally means 'fat Tuesday' — the last day to eat butter, cream, and meat before the forty days of Lent begin.”
Mardi is French for Tuesday, from the Latin Martis dies (day of Mars). Gras is French for fat, from Latin crassus (thick, fat). Mardi gras — fat Tuesday — is the day before Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent. The name is practical: before the Lenten fast, households needed to use up their stocks of fat, butter, eggs, and meat. The feast was not indulgence for its own sake. It was grocery management.
The tradition of pre-Lenten carnival (from Italian carnevale, 'farewell to meat') is at least a thousand years old. But the specific phrase 'mardi gras' is French, and the celebration most associated with it is in a French colony: New Orleans. French explorers under Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville reached the mouth of the Mississippi River on March 3, 1699 — Mardi Gras day — and named their camp Point du Mardi Gras. The celebration has been part of the city's identity ever since.
New Orleans held its first organized Mardi Gras parade in 1837. The krewe system — private social clubs that organize floats, balls, and parades — began with the Mistick Krewe of Comus in 1857. Rex, Zulu, Endymion, Bacchus — the krewes transformed Mardi Gras from a Catholic holy day into a civic spectacle. Throws — beads, doubloons, trinkets tossed from floats — became the signature currency of the celebration.
Mardi Gras is now inseparable from New Orleans. The city's economy depends on it. The carnival season begins on Twelfth Night (January 6) and builds to Fat Tuesday. Schools close. Businesses close. The entire city parades, drinks, and eats for weeks. Other cities have Mardi Gras celebrations — Rio de Janeiro has Carnival, Venice has Carnevale — but the French phrase 'mardi gras' belongs, in American English, to one city.
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Today
Mardi Gras generates an estimated $1 billion in economic activity for New Orleans each year. The purple, gold, and green color scheme (representing justice, power, and faith) is recognizable worldwide. King cakes — round pastries with a plastic baby hidden inside — are shipped nationally. The celebration has commercial infrastructure that a medieval pope would not have anticipated.
A French phrase for a practical problem — what to do with leftover butter before the fast — became an American cultural institution. The fat was the point. Use it up, eat it all, because tomorrow you cannot. Mardi Gras is the celebration of a deadline.
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