The story of Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras falls on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent. Its roots reach back long before Christianity: historians trace its pagan antecedents to Roman festivals such as Lupercalia and Saturnalia - late-winter celebrations of spring, fertility, and the loosening of social hierarchies. As Christianity spread through Europe, authorities often absorbed rather than abolished these popular traditions, tying their dates to the liturgical calendar.

The name is French: Mardi means Tuesday, Gras means fat. "Fat Tuesday" refers to the centuries-old practice of eating rich, perishable foods - meat, butter, eggs - before the 40 days of Lenten fasting. In England the same day became Shrove Tuesday, or Pancake Day.

Mardi Gras reached North America through French Catholic exploration. On 2 March 1699, the French-Canadian explorer Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, landed about sixty miles south of the future New Orleans. Realising it was the eve of the holiday, he named the spot "Pointe du Mardi Gras" - the first recorded use of the name on the continent.

In 1703 the settlement of Fort Louis de la Louisiane (today's Mobile, Alabama) held the first official Mardi Gras celebration in what is now the United States. In 1704 Mobile formed a secret society, the Masque de la Mobile, a forerunner of the krewe system. New Orleans was founded by Bienville in 1718, and by the 1730s Mardi Gras was openly celebrated there - with elegant society balls, but not yet parades.

By the mid-19th century, New Orleans Mardi Gras had grown chaotic and sometimes violent. The turning point came on 8 February 1857, when the Mistick Krewe of Comus staged the first organised, themed night parade - floats, costumed maskers, and torchlight - before retiring to a grand ball. Comus coined the word "krewe" and set the template still in use today: a theme, decorated floats, masked riders, and a private ball.

Others followed in its wake: the Twelfth Night Revelers (1870), Rex (1872), the Krewe of Proteus (1882), and the Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club, which first appeared in 1909.

In 1872 a group of businessmen created the Rex Organisation - Rex is Latin for "king" - to stage a daytime parade and spur post-war tourism. Rex established the title "King of Carnival" and adopted the anthem still sung today, "If Ever I Cease to Love." To this day Rex arrives by river on Lundi Gras and receives the key to the city from the Mayor on Fat Tuesday.

Rex chose the colors of Carnival - purple, green, and gold - in 1872. Their now-famous meanings came two decades later: the 1892 Rex parade, themed "Symbolism of Colors," assigned purple to justice, green to faith, and gold to power. The colors were not given those meanings in 1872, and the popular tale that they honored Russia's visiting Grand Duke Alexei is a debunked myth.

Throwing trinkets to the crowd began in the early 1870s with the Twelfth Night Revelers. The modern aluminium doubloon came much later: Rex introduced it in 1960, designed by H. Alvin Sharpe. European glass beads gave way to plastic by the 1960s, and today LED and hand-decorated throws are the most coveted.

Zulu's hand-painted coconuts are the most prized catch of all. The all-female Krewe of Muses is famous for its hand-glittered high-heeled shoes - both are handed out or thrown in tiny numbers, which is exactly why catching one is a story.

In 1875 Governor Henry Warmoth signed the "Mardi Gras Act," making Fat Tuesday an official legal holiday in Louisiana - a status it still holds.

Modern Carnival was reshaped by the super krewes - huge, open-membership clubs with enormous floats, hundreds of riders, and celebrity monarchs. Endymion first paraded in 1967 (and now ends inside the Superdome); Bacchus broke with old-line tradition in 1969 by crowning Hollywood's Danny Kaye as its first celebrity king and opening its ball to the public.

Orpheus, co-founded by New Orleans native Harry Connick Jr. in 1993, first rolled in 1994 as one of the first major co-ed super krewes. Together they pulled Carnival away from invitation-only secrecy toward the populist, spectacle-driven event visitors know today.

The Black Masking Indian tradition is one of New Orleans' most powerful cultural inheritances. Excluded from the white krewes, Black New Orleanians built their own: masking in elaborately hand-beaded and feathered suits that honor both African ceremonial dress and the Native American peoples who once sheltered escaped enslaved Africans in the bayous.

Each tribe - the Wild Magnolias, Wild Tchoupitoulas, and others - is hierarchical, led by a Big Chief, and sews an entirely new suit by hand every year. The suits are widely regarded as among the finest contemporary folk art in the country.

Mardi Gras has long been a barometer of civic stability, suspended whenever war or disaster made celebration untenable: during the Civil War (1862-1865), after the 1875 Battle of Liberty Place, during World War I (1918-1919, compounded by the influenza pandemic), and throughout World War II (1942-1945). The 1946 season, after the war, was felt as an act of collective relief.

The krewe system was racially and socially exclusive from its 1857 start. In response, Black New Orleanians built parallel traditions - the Zulu club and the Mardi Gras Indians. In 1991 Councilwoman Dorothy Mae Taylor pushed through an ordinance requiring krewes to certify they did not discriminate as a condition of a parade permit.

Three of the oldest krewes - Comus, Momus, and Proteus - stopped parading rather than comply. Courts later weakened the ordinance, but only Proteus returned to the streets, in 2000; Comus and Momus have never paraded again. Newer krewes are typically far more integrated.

Hurricane Katrina struck on 29 August 2005, flooding about 80% of the city. Six months later, in February 2006, New Orleans held a smaller-than-usual but defiant first Carnival back - some floats even kept the waterline stains - and it is remembered as one of the most emotionally charged Mardi Gras in the city's history.

In 2021 the pandemic cancelled the parades, so New Orleanians turned their houses into floats. Thousands of homes were decorated as "Yardi Gras" house floats, letting people celebrate safely from the sidewalk - proof that the city will find a way to roll even when the streets cannot.