Join us as we celebrate Mardi Gras with music and more!  A slide and video show introduces young audiences to the excitement of N’awlins and the big day.  Then get ready to swing with some happy Dixieland jazz, courtesy of members of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra (our krewe for the proceedings).

A Closer Look—The tale of a great party!

Mardi Gras (from the French words, meaning "fat Tuesday"), or Carnival (from the Latin words carn-caro levare, meaning "removal of flesh"), is a festival that embodies many traditions that originated with the ancient Greeks and Romans and reinterpreted by the Christian church, relating to gods and rituals honoring spring fertility rites.

Mardi Gras came to America in 1699 with the French explorer Sieur d’Iberville.  It had been celebrated in Paris since the Middle Ages, where it was a major holiday.  Mardi Gras was being celebrated in France on March 3 of that year, the day the explorer set up a camp on the west bank of the river about 60 miles south of where New Orleans is today.  In honor of this important day, Iberville named the site Pont du Mardi Gras.

By the late 1700's while it was under French rule, masked balls and festivals were common Mardi Gras events in New Orleans. When New Orleans came under Spanish rule the custom was banned. The prohibition against masked festivals continued until 1823 when, with Louisiana now under the U.S. flag, the Creole populace convinced the governor to permit masked balls. In 1827 street masking was again legalized. During the early 1800's public celebrations of Mardi Gras centered around maskers parading on foot, in carriages and on horseback. In 1871 Twelfth Night Revelers, a new ‘krewe’ of revelers with costumes and themes began the custom of presenting a young woman with a golden bean hidden in a cake. This young woman was the first queen of Mardi Gras. This was also the origin of the king cake tradition.

In 1872 Grand Duke Alexis Romanoff of Russia visited New Orleans. This year the ‘Krewe of Rex’ began the grand tradition of the "King of Carnival." Krewe Rex also introduced the official colors of Mardi Gras: purple, gold and green.  Ten years later in 1882, the Krewe of Proteus paraded with a theme styled after Egyptian mythology, setting the stage for the progression of more and more outlandish regalia and presentations on the parade route that makes today’s Carnival so spectacular.  In 1894, the first African American Mardi Gras organization was formed; the Original Illinois Club.  The first female organization, Les Mysterieuses, appeared in 1896.

Today, Mardi Gras can be counted as one of the nation’s biggest parties, with throngs of people coming from all over the globe to party in the streets and keeping up a grand tradition of public revelry stretching back thousands of years.

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