Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Feast of the Navigium Isidis, celebrated in Ancient Rome in honor of the goddess Isis. The word "Carnival" indicates a Christian origin of the festival. [15] The Latin-derived name of the holiday is sometimes also spelled Carnaval, typically in areas where Dutch, French, Spanish, and Portuguese are spoken, or Carnevale in Italian-speaking contexts.
Mardi Gras arrived in North America as a sedate French Catholic tradition with the Le Moyne brothers, [3] Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville and Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, in the late 17th century, when King Louis XIV sent the pair to defend France's claim on the territory of Louisiane, which included what are now the U.S. states of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
Mardi Gras (UK: / ˌ m ɑːr d i ˈ ɡ r ɑː /, US: / ˈ m ɑːr d i ɡ r ɑː /; [1] [2] also known as Shrove Tuesday) is the final day of Carnival (also known as Shrovetide or Fastelavn); it thus falls on the day before the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday. [3]
Where the first official celebration actually happened, however, is up for constant debate. Both Mobile, Alabama, and New Orleans, Louisiana, are said to have hosted the first Mardi Gras .
The first record of Mardi Gras being celebrated in Louisiana was at the mouth of the Mississippi River in what is now lower Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, on March 2, 1699. Iberville, Bienville, and their men celebrated it as part of an observance of Catholic practice. The date of the first celebration of the festivities in New Orleans is unknown.
For instance, the main rhythms used in carnival celebrations were developed by Afro-Brazilians and make use of European instruments like the cavaquinho and pandeiro to create melodies and arrangements, also the fantasies and costumes in the Brazilian carnival borrow concepts from the clothing of the Native American populations, in the use of ...
The first record of the holiday being marked in America is on March 3, 1699, at a camp site along the Mississippi River delta. [9] Following the construction of Fort Louis de La Louisiane in 1702, the soldiers and settlers celebrated Mardi Gras beginning in 1703. Thus started an annual tradition, only occasionally canceled because of war.
Depending on what story you believe, America's most famous shopping day is either named after a financial crisis, a concerned police force or, according to some theories, 19th-century slave owners ...