The historical origins of Mardi Gras are much debated, butmany of its traditions seem to have their roots in early Celtic Christianrituals in ancient Gaul, Ireland, and Scotland—which, in turn, seem to haveeven earlier Greek and Egyptian antecedents. Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, was a celebration of life’sexcesses before the austere self-sacrifices of the Christian season ofLent. It received its name fromthe tradition of slaughtering and feasting upon a fattened calf on the last dayof the Winter Carnival that followed the Twelfth Night, or Epiphany.
Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, forty days before Easter, and traditionally included a much more proscribed lifestyle for faithful Christianfamilies—a season of severe fasting and asceticism. The day prior to Ash Wednesday, wasthus, the final hurrah and excesses frowned upon at any other time of the yearwere actually embraced and exulted.
The ancient Mardi Gras tradition was first brought to theNew World by the French, and it became a vital component of the culturesettlers established along the Gulf Coast. Though it is most often associated with the city of NewOrleans, all throughout the region, festive carousers celebrate during the twoweeks before the beginning of Lent with parades, balls, masquerades, streetdances, concerts, amusements, jocularity, and merry banquets.
In 1682, French explorer Robert Cavalier Sieur de la Salle,claimed the region from where the Mississippi drained into the ocean all theway to Pensacola Bay in the name of King Louis XIV of France. Spanish explorers had alreadydiscovered the region, but abandoned it when they failed to discover gold. La Salle attempted to return to theregion two years later, but ended up in Texas instead. He spent the next twoyears searching for his discovery—a search that ended when his men finallymurdered him.
War prevented France from continuing its colonizationefforts until 1697. King Louis XIVthen commissioned a Canadian, Pierre le Moyne, Sieur D’Iberville, to secure acolony and French interests in the region. Iberville’s flotilla finally landed on this day, twelvemiles off the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and established his headquarters on thesite of present-day Ocean Springs, Mississippi. The following spring, he built a fort near present-dayPhoenix, Louisiana—the first permanent French colony on the Gulf Coast.
But ongoing wars and other concerns kept the attentions ofKing Louis away from the New World. When he died in 1715, he was succeeded by his five-year-old greatgrandson in name, and in practice by Philippe, Duke of Orleans, who served asRegent for the young king. One ofthe Regent’s friends was John Law, who devised a get-rich-quick strategy ofpromoting Louisiana’s riches. Thescheme virtually bankrupted France, but not before the dramatic expansion ofthe colony, and the founding of New Orleans, Biloxi, Mobile, and Pensacola inthe spring of 1718.
Progress in the new towns was slow, but Mardi Grasfestivities are believed to have begun in their earliest days. It provided them with a sense ofcultural cohesion and identity. Indeed, it seemed that early on the Mardi Gras of the colonies took on acharacter and a flavor it never had back in France.
