NEW ORLEANS (CN) — Mardi Gras always arrives with the stunning realization — among at least some New Orleanians — that in most places around the world “Fat Tuesday,” as it translates from French, is just another day.
Of course, the season is celebrated in other places too, with Mobile, Alabama, vying with New Orleans each year against ever-adjusting historical accounts as to which city held the first celebration.
But New Orleans holds the most popular Mardi Gras festivities in the U.S., with noisy crowds and decked-out parades, black tie balls and parties in the streets. The fun and chaos intensify in the days leading up to Fat Tuesday, with events ranging from relatively small walking parades — such as the Mystic Krewe of Barkus, dogs parading “with their humans as escort” through the French Quarter — to elaborate parades of many lighted, animated and towering floats.
Colorful floats with dozens of masked riders begin coursing through the city almost constantly beginning six days before Mardi Gras Day, traveling past mansions on St. Charles Avenue, through the Business District amid hotels and high-rise office buildings and on into the French Quarter. The finale of the annual celebration is Tuesday. At midnight, after the parades are over, mounted police will descend upon French Quarter bars and residences and make a show of extinguishing lights.
From here, the excess that has steadily grown throughout the season will give way to Ash Wednesday, ushering in 40 days of fasting until Easter.
Mardi Gras, though now a secular holiday, has its roots in Roman Catholicism, and has to do with excess, with the act of fattening up on food and experience leading up to the period of Lent. The chaos of the season is meant as a watershed for what is to come.
This is not to say that all New Orleanians plan to let their celebration grind to a halt once Ash Wednesday rolls around. Neither do all love the chaos that ramps up each winter when millions of revelers descend upon the city.
But even if everyone doesn't appreciate the glut of crowds, noise and traffic that intensify with each passing day, there are parades for everyone's tastes.
The Monster Parade — a walking parade small enough to be left off the schedule of festivities altogether — meanders through the bohemian Bywater neighborhood each year on the Friday evening before Mardi Gras.
This year’s Monster Parade began and ended outside Brandan BEMIKE Odums' Studio Be on Royal Street. The studio’s motto, “Art has power. Create change,” could describe the feeling of the parade itself.
Floats moved by human might and overflowing with bare-skinned dancers sporting fangs and extra eyes drifted through the neighborhood’s mostly darkened streets, bouncing to high-volume punk songs, colorful lights and movie projections creating a lighted landscape.
It was a warm and balmy evening with high white clouds. Children in homemade creature costumes descended upon un-costumed paraders, threatening to destroy them for being human, and brass bands filled the spaces in between floats with moody jazz with hypnotic drumbeats.
During Mardi Gras 2023, Interrobang, a collaborative creative arts group whose designs loomed large in many of the costumes at Friday’s Monster Parade, created enormous, terrifying and beautiful interactive bugs.
The group explains on its website that the insect population worldwide has dropped by 45% since 1974. A lack of bugs, it explains, would have a dire effect on climate. “Let there be bugs,” their statement urges.
The group says that the insects were part of “the challenge of how to make the unseen seen,” as across the country “communities are attempting to contend with large-scale changes and reconcile narratives that are not reflected in our public consciousness” or in our environment.
During the weekend, parades snarled traffic the city over.
Iris, the oldest all-woman krewe, founded in 1917 by Aminthe Nungesser, the great-aunt of Louisiana Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser, hit the streets early Saturday morning with floats designed to resemble various cities of the world.
The Super Krewe of Endymion wrapped up its elaborate parade that evening with its annual Samedi Gras Endymion Extravaganza, headlined by Sting and Flo Rida.
The sun rose the next morning, embers of the extravaganza still smoldering, with the help of the Krewe of Eos who sang it into existence along the Mississippi River in the French Quarter.
Eos, named for the Greek goddess who personifies the dawn, takes place at sunrise the Sunday morning before Mardi Gras, where songs are sung to bring up the sun.
The location for the ceremony can change from year to year. The group sends homemade invitations out in the days before the event, giving cryptic descriptions of where to meet and how to dress.
This Mardi Gras season is the second in a row that a krewe of dancers from Southeast Asia whose motto to “put the masala in Mardi Gras” has captured parade-goers’ hearts.
Krewe da Bhan Gras marched in Krewe Bohéme in 2023, a walking parade led by a green absinthe fairy. The colorful costumes, paired with loud, fast-paced music brought a touch of Bollywood to New Orleans and delighted spectators. The group was booked again this year by the well-established krewes of Iris and Muses.
“Oh my god, last year, the crowd went wild,” krewe member Amita Krishnan told local news station WWNO. “We loved dancing down the streets in the French Quarter, and the audience loved it too. It was such a beautiful moment for a lot of us.”
Arthur Hardy, a preeminent Mardi Gras historian, told WWNO that Mardi Gras celebrations have changed a lot since the first parades in the 1800s. One constant though, he said, has been that Mardi Gras has reflected the city and people who live there.
“Mardi Gras was the domain of wealthy, white men for most of the (19th) century,” Hardy said. “But eventually, it became diverse and it did so organically with people saying, ‘Hey, I want to celebrate, too.’”
Hardy noted the explosion in recent years of artsy krewes.
“We talk about equity and inclusion and diversity, well Mardi Gras supplies all of that every year,” Hardy said. “[Krewe da Bhan Gras] is an example of that. It’s an example of how Mardi Gras belongs to the people.”
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