THE LEGEND OF MARDI GRAS

Mardi Gras always falls on the Tuesday that is 46 days before Easter. It is always the day before Ash Wednesday, which is the start of Lent.

Carnival refers to the season of revelry before Mardi Gras. It begins officially on Jan. 6, which is known as Twelfth Night or Kings' Day, so named because it falls 12 days after Christmas on the day the Wise Men are said to have reached Bethlehem.

Carnival celebrations fall into two categories: public and private. The private celebrations are balls, held by clubs called krewes. Some krewes let anyone join, while others are exclusive and made up mostly of FONOF (fine old New Orleans families).

The first Carnival ball of the season is always the Twelfth Night Ball, held on Jan. 6.

The public celebrations take the form of parades, sponsored by the same krewes that hold the balls for members only. Not every krewe has a parade, although every krewe will throw a party for its members. A very few krewes allow the public to buy tickets to their balls - Endymion and Orpheus, for example. About 70 groups in a four-parish area around New Orleans hold parades.

Most krewes are named for figures in Greek mythology, like Bacchus for the god of wine or Orpheus for the god of music (no coincidence the latter was co-founded by Harry Connick Jr.)

The parade season officially begins on the second Friday before Mardi Gras, although the parade calendar is expanding. At the beginning of the season, parades are held on weekends only, then become more frequent until the week prior to Mardi Gras, when there's at least a parade a day. There are nine parades on Mardi Gras, most notably Rex.

Rex (don't say "king of"; it's redundant) - always a prominent New Orleans businessman - is considered the king of Mardi Gras. (You should, therefore, sneer when you hear some Hollywood matinee idol announce to Jay Leno that he will be "king of the Mardi Gras." He won't.)

Every parade has a theme, usually borrowed from mythology, history or Hollywood. Most parades have mock royalty, kings and queens and dukes and duchesses, either drawn from the ranks of the krewe's members or celebrities (hence the Jay Leno clown above). All parade riders throw trinkets - beads, doubloons, small toys, candy - from the floats to the crowds. These are called "throws." Parades consist of anywhere from 10 to 40 floats carrying krewe members, marching bands, dance groups, costumed characters and the like. Some parades are small and suburban, others downtown and lavish.

The colors of Carnival are purple, green and gold, chosen in 1872 by that year's Rex. The 1892 Rex parade gave the official colors meaning: purple for justice, green for faith and gold for power.

The one ubiquitous food of the Carnival season is the king cake. Sweet roll-like dough is shaped into a big circle, cooked and brushed with purple, green and gold sugar or icing. Then a plastic baby, representing the Christ child, is tucked inside. Whoever gets the piece of cake containing the baby must, by tradition, provide the next king cake. Nowadays, king cakes come with a variety of fillings from chocolate to pineapple.

MARDI GRAS MASKS

Masks have always possessed a certain air of mystery that has fascinated people for centuries. Legend tells us that at ancient Greek festivals in honor of Dionysus, the god of theater, actors began wearing very large masks. Because the structures used to present the plays were so colossal, these masks bore exaggerated expressions so the actors could convey to their immense 25,000+ audiences different emotions and reactions. When the Romans conquered Italy, they adopted the Grecian love of theater, and the use of masks in celebrations and plays passed through Europe by way of their massive empire.

However, this is not the first, nor the only place that the integration of masks into a particular culture has taken place. Many nationalities held and some still hold celebrations and ceremonies annually to honor the dead or the natural change of seasons.

In Nigeria, the wooden Yoruba mask of an Egungun face is still made for ceremonial festivities celebrating the remembrance of ancestors. The Celtic "All Saints Day" tradition [and origin of Halloween] marked the passing of autumn to winter. Men in the community dressed up as dreaded creatures while people in the towns left out food and drink to placate the roaming souls. The Cherokee tribe of North America held the Booger Dance, associated with ghosts, which was performed as part of the winter ceremonies. These Booger Masks were affiliated with ghosts and spirits, and the performance during the winter months meant that the dance of the ghosts could not affect the growing vegetation and crops of the community. The Mexican Day of the Dead celebration, held to honor children and the dead (or the dead and the continuity of life), takes place during the first two days of November. People decorate resting places of their loved ones with real and paper flowers, and they fill the streets wearing masks bearing images of skeletons and Christian icons. The masking tradition remains a vital part of Mardi Gras in the city of New Orleans. Like its counterparts in the Caribbean, South America, and Europe, this pre-Lenten festival is framed by the original masks worn by people in masked balls, krewe members in parades, tourists and partygoers during the final crescendo of madness known as Fat Tuesday. It is a time when the individual hides behind the mask to play out the final moments of fun and to bid "farewell to the flesh" before the penitence of Lent begins.