Mardi Gras: Tradition Satisfies Primal Urge to Party

by Craig Bennett*

During the Middle Ages and the dawn of Christianity in Europe, the Church had its own strong and long-standing tradition of relatively unrestrained communal celebration to address. Both the Romans and the ancient Jews had their public festivals during which both secular and religious authorities were mocked, drunkenness was common—and everyone danced. The average Christian had not completely abandoned these occasions full of revelry and overindulgence; he had simply adapted them to the new religion. The Christmas holidays, for example, became the time for the Feast of Fools, when men would dress up as women and vice-versa. Ribald and even obscene parodies were enacted, often in churches, depicting both priests and public officials in the most uncomplimentary situations. And drinking, dancing, and sexual promiscuity were the order of the day.

However, this was not to last. A combination of forces conspired to wear away such freedom. The continuing suppression and efforts at social control by the Church continued unabated. Anything that took a person’s thoughts away from working his way toward salvation was frowned upon and, if possible, declared impermissible. The rise of Protestantism made things even worse. Against nearly all things Catholic, Protestantism—and Calvinism in particular—laid out an even straighter and narrower path for the believer than had Catholicism. And Calvinism seemed made for the Industrial Revolution. The idea that one’s soul stood to benefit from constant, productive labor was a major tenet of Calvinism, along with the warning that both festivities and simple idleness were sinful.

How dismally much of the simple, sensual joys of the flesh have been squeezed out of life by the prohibitions and inhibitions instituted by religion! And it wasn’t just The Roman Catholic Church or even Protestantism that was responsible. Most of the ancient religions of the Middle East had such restrictions to one extent or another almost as far back as they could be traced. But those that have endured apparently came from a common body of belief and tradition that would account for their shared abhorrence of the body and the many pleasures associated with it.

The forces of sobriety, regimentation, and restraint eventually won out; and in America they had the upper hand essentially from the beginning. The last remnant we have of such a richly endowed life of community, celebration, and permissiveness as once existed in late medieval Europe is Mardi Gras. Because of Europe’s Roman Catholic heritage, Mardi Gras is celebrated more widely and enthusiastically there; but here its observance is effectively confined to New Orleans, probably the one city in the U.S. where European (primarily French) influence lingers most obviously.

But the city of Rio de Janeiro has become to the rest of the world what New Orleans has become to America. There is a large proportion of the city’s residents—mostly by far the poor people who live in the favelas, the crowded communities full of decrepit houses and makeshift shacks on the steep hillsides surrounding the city—who have made the festival their own. Despite poverty and overt, centuries-old discrimination, they have formed the many different samba schools that account for the growth of Carnival from an increasingly polite and exclusive round of balls and parties among the city’s elite to a huge, week-long, non-stop celebration culminating in the grand parade of the various schools through the recently constructed “Sambadrome,” where they compete for prizes and recognition.

Their costumes are incredibly elaborate, spectacularly gaudy, and yet, for all that, scandalously brief for the younger women. New samba tunes and lyrics are written each year, many for the benefit of a particular school, and the samba has become the unofficial national song form of Brazil. Rivalries develop between both leading individuals in various samba schools and the schools themselves. Sometimes extreme violence erupts. Staggering amounts of money are spent on costumes, instruments, and other things that will be used for nothing but Carnival. And, perhaps most importantly, thousands of Cariocas all through the poor, black, chronically unemployed, and marginalized population of Rio devote the major part of their lives to preparing, year by year, for that grand parade through the Sambadrome. For them, there is nothing more exciting, more glamorous, or more rewarding than that one night of samba.

One might logically ask why such people, who have virtually nothing, can spend so much time, so much money, and so much energy on something that amounts to little more than a single night of public celebration. But as one samba school participant admitted, “That’s something very strange and hard to understand about us. No one can easily explain to the outside world why we are willing to sacrifice so much for Carnival. But we are.”

I can’t help suspecting that it has a lot to do with the strong sense of community engendered by a whole samba school of Cariocas working together, sacrificing together, and finally performing together on their big night. United by a single goal and striving together for an entire year in the hope of achieving it can bring people together who might otherwise find little in common. The sense of community that generally results can come to occupy a very important place in one’s life—a place that makes it worth whatever sacrifices one has to make in order to belong. And that is simply indicative of the strength, the depth, and the urgency of the need for community that is expressed in and through such communal celebrations that still take place anywhere in the world.

In recent years there’s been a considerable increase of interest in ancient pagan, nature-based religions. Wicca seems to be gaining popularity, as are beliefs and practices that were common among the ancient Celts. Looking at the world I see all around me, it’s little wonder that people are attracted to something simpler, more elemental, and even more primitive. The complexity of modern life is sometimes overwhelming—and well it should be. I’m a little surprised that there hasn’t been more of a reaction against it than evidence seems to suggest.

But this is not the world that human beings have evolved to inhabit. There is something in us, I believe, that still yearns to gather around the communal fire, deep in the forest beneath the full moon, and dance wildly to the rhythm of pulsating drums. It’s something that needs the solitude offered by the deep woods, the wild banks of rivers, the empty, windswept beaches, and the slopes of distant mountains. Yet it’s also something that needs the companionship of its own kind, others like ourselves, with whom we can share the wonder and delight of that same natural world where we find both the plain and the mountain, the grass and the forest, the deer and the wolf—and each other.

*Craig H. Bennett, author of Nights on the Mountain and More Things in Heaven and Earth, available at amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, and most book stores

Sources:

Ehrenreich, Barbara. Dancing in the Streets. Metropolitan/Henry Holt: New York 2006

Guillermoprieto, Alma. Samba. Vintage Departures/Vintage: New York 1990

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