🥳🎉 It’s Mardi Gras 🥳🎉
Yes, Mardi Gras, French for Fat Tuesday, is here!!
The carnival celebration usually begins on the Christian feast of the Epiphany and ends on Shrove Tuesday, and it got its name of Fat Tuesday due to the practice of eating up all of the rich and fatty foods before the fasting and abstinence of Lent began on Ash Wednesday.
Here in the UK, Shrove Tuesday is our Pancake Day, where cream, butter, eggs and other rich foods are made into pancakes for the same reason.
As well as a time of feasting, Mardi Gras is full of colourful masks, beads, parades of floats and dancing!!
Mardi Gras is celebrated in many parts of the world, but nowhere does it quite like New Orleans!!
The most popular colours used for costumes and masks are purple, green and gold - a fabulous combination.
Costumes are usually along the lines of fairies, animals, characters from mythology, Medieval costumes, clowns and Native Americans.
And the costumed participants throw purple, green and gold beads and other trinkets from the floats to onlookers, who call out for them.
It is a wonderful and colourful spectacle, so, today, let’s have a little Mardi Gras party of our own sharing everything wonderful about this colourful celebration, whatever form it takes in your part of the world, as well as our usual friendly fun and chat!!
