what mardi gras?

Question

i know its a kinda festeval thing in new orleans but what happends and what does it celebrate? x

Answer 1

Mardi Gras means "Fat Tuesday."

It's the festival just before Lent. Mardi Gras is synonymous with Carnaval.

Read up on Lent, and its purpose. Then you know that Mardi Gras is the opposite, and held before. It's a holdover from the pagan rites celebrating the coming of Spring.

Answer 2

Mardi Gras is the last big party the Catholics have before the beginning of Lent, the 40 days of personal sacrifice before Easter. Although it just used to be the Tuesday (Lent starts on a Wednesday ) the party has gotten so big it takes up the whole previous weekend & some are now making it the week before !

Answer 3

Shrove (Pancake) Tuesday: supposed to be the last day before the start of Lent - but Mardi Gras in New Orleans and elsewhere has turned into a festival with Floats and dressing up, drinking and debauchery everywhere. It is Carnival at its highest level.

Shrove Tuesday was the day when Christians used to use up all their meats etc., in preparation for the strict fast during the 40 days of Lent..................read on:

Shrove Tuesday.

Shrove Tuesday was a special day, one that was well spent,
When we ate all that we had, before the start of Lent.
Pancakes by the dozen, and games we’d always play,
For once it was all over, came cruel Ash Wednesday.

Forty days of fasting, not including all Sundays,
The hunger pain, the frost and rain blowing in all ways.
Lent always fell in early March, before the Spring had sprung,
It was not fine, not a nice time, when we were very young.

We heard of other places, where the sun was always warm,
Where Mardi Gras was practised, I supposed it did no harm.
But the priest, he spoke of nakedness, and debauchery,
(We wished that we were older, and could go there to see).

Now how the times have changed, in oh so many ways,
Lent is never practised and Shrove is Pancake Day,
The suffering of Jesus, that it should represent,
Is seen in but a token, in what’s given up for Lent.

I doubt if there’s one person, aged under twenty-five,
Who’s ever felt true hunger, in their cushioned life,
Perhaps it would be better, more healthier I would say,
To bring back Shrove Tuesday, and get rid of Pancake Day.


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Answer 4

it means "fat tuesday", not sure why americans wld give that name to a festival...

Answer 5

not 100% sure