Mardi Gras – Fat Tuesday
Mardi Gras is French for Fat Tuesday, Shrove Tuesday, and Carnival Season, and is a vibrant celebration whose date varies each year due to its lunar origins. However, it always takes place on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, marking the beginning of Lent.
Rooted in Christian tradition, Mardi Gras retains its festive spirit among the predominantly Catholic French population, even though its religious significance is diminishing. Today, this celebration has become a joyful and convivial occasion, enjoyed by all, where everyone is invited to dress up and participate in the festivities.
Origin of the Carnival
Historically, Mardi Gras marked the culmination of a week of festivities preceding Lent, a forty-day period of fasting before Easter. During Lent, the consumption of meat and dairy products was forbidden, prompting families to empty their stores of fatty foods on Fat Tuesday. The term Carnival comes from Levare Carne, meaning to remove meat, symbolizing the abstinence from meat during Lent. And anyway, given the price of meat in the past, people generally didn’t keep any at home!
However, the problem arose with basic perishable goods such as butter, milk, and eggs, essential to the daily diet.
So, what did people do? They made crêpes -pancakes! Simple as that!
In short, they emptied their cupboards and pantry, undertaking a kind of major “spring cleaning” in the kitchen. The prospect of forty days without meat or dairy products encouraged a certain degree of overindulgence. They therefore devoted an entire week to enjoying all their food supplies, with Mardi Gras being the highlight of these seven days of festivities. Some, with a touch of mischief, dressed up and amused themselves by knocking on their neighbours’ doors to ask for extra crêpes!
Photo via Wikimedia Commons: Crêpes by Benoît Prieur (1975–) CC0
