This year of 2025, Mardi Gras arrives on March 4. While the season of Septuagesima, Shrovetide, Carneval — call it what you will — is ending, it is important to remember that keeping it is the hallmark of Catholic cultures. The fact that we consider Mardi-Gras a peculiarly Louisiana custom reminds us of the terrible truth that most of the United States are post-Protestant rather than post-Catholic, even if all are post-Christian. As it is, Mardi-Gras gets a very bad rap in many “right thinking” places in America. One can certainly understand why, given what it has become in New Orleans to-day. Drunken tourists exposing themselves to one another in the storied streets of the French Quarter are hardly what one associates with a Catholic observance. But notice that the folks doing all of that tend not to be locals.
For them, the key to Mardi-Gras are the “Krewes.” These semi-secret societies sponsor balls and parades at different times throughout the Mardi-Gras season. The oldest and most prestigious are Comus, Proteus, Rex, Zulu, Twelfth Night Revelers, and the Knights of Momus. There are a great many others in New Orleans and environs, Mobile, Biloxi, and elsewhere along the Gulf. Most produce for the Mardi Gras season a ball for members and guests, and a parade through certain areas.
In New Orleans, although Comus is the oldest and most prestigious of the Krewes, it is the King of Rex who is King of Mardi Gras as a whole. On the day before, Lundi Gras, he arrives by boat at Gallier Hall, the old City Hall. There the Mayor gives him the keys to the city — symbolising Rex’s rule over New Orleans until the end of the season at Midnight the following day. The Rex Ball and the Comus Ball are held at opposite ends of the Roosevelt Hotel on Mardi Gras night. Mardi Gras Balls are generally white-tie affairs, and these two are particularly elegant. At both, renowned guests are introduced to the masked King and Queen of the given Krewe, and bow or curtsey as one would to any Royal couple. In 1956, however, there was a question. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor were to attend the Rex Ball, and as the Duke had been King Edward VIII before his abdication two decades earlier, all New Orleans wondered if “real” royalty would bow before Rex’s King and his consort. When presented, the Duke bowed and the Duchess curtsied low — and New Orleans society fell in love with them.
At any rate, just before Midnight, in deference to Comus’ antiquity, the King of Rex makes his way through the hotel to the Comus Ball. At the stroke of 12, he and the King of Comus toast each other, it is Ash Wednesday, and Mardi Gras ends. The New Orleans Police Department ride through the streets, the revellers vanish within doors, and Lent descends upon the Creole City. It is a scene repeated in various ways across the globe in all the many cities and towns that celebrate the festive season.
As ever, Dom Gueranger has some observations on the celebrations, as they were in his day: “How far from being true children of Abraham are those Christians who spend this and the two following days in intemperance and dissipation, because Lent is so soon to be upon us. We can easily understand how the simple manners of our Catholic forefathers could keep a leave-taking of the ordinary way of living, which Lent was to put a stop to, and reconcile their innocent Carnival with Christian gravity; just as we can understand how their rigorous observance of the laws of the Church for Lent would inspire certain festive customs at Easter. Even in our own times, a joyous Shrovetide is not to be altogether reprobated, provided the Christian sentiment of the approaching holy Season of Lent be strong enough to check the evil tendency of corrupt nature: otherwise the original intention of an innocent custom would be perverted, and the forethought of Penance could in no sense be considered as the prompter of our joyous farewell to ease and comforts. While admitting all this, we would ask, what right or title have they to share in these Shrovetide rejoicings, whose Lent will pass and find them out of the Church, because they will not have complied with the precept of Easter Communion? And they, too, who claim dispensations from abstinence and fasting during Lent, and, from one reason or another, evade every penitential exercise during the solemn Forty Days of Penance, and will find themselves at Easter as weighed down by the guilt and debt of their sins as they were on Ash Wednesday, — what meaning, we would ask, can there possibly be in their feast-making at Shrovetide?” He goes on to counsel attending the Forty Hours devotion during Mardi Gras, to balance things out, as it were.
But this is a very important point. The whole premise of Carnevale is to celebrate before Lent — to consume all forbidden foods and “get it out of one’s system” before the penitential season hits. It makes no sense if one is not going to keep Lent strictly. Lent has successively gotten easier, in terms of the Church’s requirements, and not surprisingly — save for the depraved — Shrovetide has thus lost its raison d’etre. But I would go so far as to say that the good Catholic has a spiritual obligation to keep both as well as he can. If we can follow as much of the original practise of Lent as we can — meatless, eggless, even dairyless, save on Sundays and certain feasts — we shall go far to restoring within ourselves the ancient order, and we shall also see the need for a festive Shrovetide.
Certainly, the gradual loss of Lent over the last few centuries has had terrible results, and proved Benedict XV’s 18th century prophecy: “The observance of Lent is the very badge of Christian warfare. By it we prove ourselves not to be enemies of Christ. By it we avert the scourges of divine justice. By it we gain strength against the princes of darkness, for it shields us with heavenly help. Should men grow remiss in their observance of Lent, it would be a detriment to God’s glory, a disgrace to the Catholic religion, and a danger to Christian souls. Neither can it be doubted that such negligence would become the source of misery to the world, of public calamity, and of private woe.”
Has it not proved so? Imagine if Lent were restored to its former glory! All of any Catholic country’s given society, and elsewhere a sizeable majority together honouring the sacrifices of Christ for them all. This would go a long way toward the public veneration of Christ the King by the whole given country — with the resulting benefits described by Pius XI a century ago in Quas Primas. As a natural result, both Shrovetide and Easter would regain their importance even in the secular life of cities from Vienna to Manila to Rio — and yes, New Orleans.
As it stands, we should treasure what remnants survive in all of the places that still observe Shrovetide in anything approaching the old manner. So too, however, we should strive to keep as rigorous a Lent as we can, follow the Holy Week Liturgies carefully, and keep Easter as joyously as we do Christmas. We do not have nearly as much support from the secular advertising world in doing so, but we have some.
After all, even as Shrovetide only really makes sense as a preparation for Lent, so too does Lent only make sense as a preparation for Easter. We should keep the first three days — Easter Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday as intensely as once the first three days of Christmas were kept, and the Week following. But the feasts that follow do so both chronologically and logically: Ascension, Pentecost, Corpus Christi, and finally the Sacred Heart. Interspersed are various Marian and Saints days. Hard though it be, let us celebrate them all as well as we can. Whenever we do, we are carving out of the darkness of the present day a little piece of the Kingdom of Christ in our hearts and in our homes. By feasting and fasting in accordance with the Church’s Calendar, we are committing acts of resistance against the demonic and human powers of this world. They would prefer we do neither — or if we do, for any reason other than the glory of God.
So during this month of March, let us feast, and feast boldly, but fast more boldly still, to paraphrase the great heresiarch Luther. He, oddly enough, retained Lent, as did the Anglicans. It was, however, the object of Calvin’s particular ire. Since the Orthodox also maintain it, we might consider keeping a strict Lent one of the most “ecumenical” things we can do — and in to-day’s bizarre religious climate, that might be sufficient to justify it!
