Happy Mardi Gras Day 2012

Finally we truly can say Happy Mardi Gras.  While the season is several weeks old and people use the term "Mardi Gras" to describe the season, only today is Mardi Gras Day; Fat Tuesday!  This day is the culmination of Carnival.  All across the greater New Orleans area, as well as acros the Cajun communities of Louisiana, folks are off work and can partake of the Mardi Gras festivities.

I always like to post about Mardi Gras because I beleive the image of this unique day and celebration is an unbalanced one from the national media perspective.  They tend to want to focus on the really wild and crazy antics in the French Quarter, which indeed, do happen.  But on balance Mardi Gras Day, as well as the weekend parades that precede it, are family affairs.  For the vast majority of New Orleanians and our tourist visitors the day will be spent celebrating along some of the more popular streets of New Orleans with picnics, bar-b-ques, blankets, ice chests and ladders, watching the endless flow of parades.  For example, if you line up early enough on St. Charles Avenue, say before 8 a.m., you will witness the many walking clubs, followed by Zulu, then the parade that is referred to as the King of Carnival, Rex, and then two parades made up entirely of family and friends on decorated trucks; Elks and Crescent City respectively.  If memory serves, from first marching group to the last decorated truck is a time span of about 7 hours.  And of course, all day long you can catch your fair share of parade favors, beads and trinkets commonly called "throws".

There is also a major Mardi Gras festival in the closest and largest suburb of New Orleans, Metairie, which hosts three parades as well.  Argus puts on its big show and is followed by two family parades and draws a very family friendly audience.  On my side of the lake, the area referred to as the Northshore, Mardi Gras parades roll in downtown Covington, Lacombe and Folsom.  There are also Mardi Gras parades and other festivities all along the Louisiana Cajun communities, including the famous celebration in Mamou and Mardi Gras is also celebrated along the Mississippi Gulf Coast and in Mobile, Alabama.

Mardi Gras Day is also known as the day that is the farewell to flesh.  In the Rex parade they have a tradition of one of the floats dedicated to the Bouef Gras, the fatted calf that reminds everyone that after today we arrive at Lent; farewell to meat and rich fare, as we celebrate the penitential season of Lent.  To show how important we revere Lent, at the stroke of midnight in New Orleans, police, firemen and an army of street cleaners and sweepers descend on the French Quarter and remind everyone that Mardi Gras is over and it's time to go home.  Now this is mostly symbolic as they really have no way to force thousands upon thousands to simply give up and go home, but it makes for a most impressive sight.  You see after the last parade rolls, most folks, especially the tourists, flock to the French Quarter for the more adult celebrations of the day.

One of the more social events of the day is the grand Mardi Gras balls of two of the oldest and most elite Mardi Gras organizations in the city, Rex and Comus.  And right before midnight, the respective courts meet in a most grand and elaborate display of old-school Mardi Gras traditions.

So this is how New Orleans and the surounding communities will spend this Tuesday.  Like I always say, across the country today it's Tuesday but down in the city that care forgot, New Orleans, it's Mardi Gras Day!