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Food During the Mardi Gras Celebration

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Food During the Mardi Gras Celebration
Food During the Mardi Gras Celebration
Mardi Gras began as a historical event to celebrate the day before Ash Wednesday in Christian celebrations. This has later become known as the Catholics holy day of obligation where the members of the church would begin their 40 day period of austerity. This 40 day period leading up to Easter Sunday is known as Lent. Fat Tuesday was another for Mardi Gras. In France Fat Tuesday was on its way to becoming a day of excess and disorderly behavior before the Lenten celebration. It is a day of a last gastronomical hurrah before the authoritarian season of Lent activates (Sexton 298).
Drunkenness and immortality are not the way the Christian community wants to be represented, nor do they portray themselves as that. However Mardi Gras is a dramatic presentation some of these important biblical themes. This may seem backwards to the communities outside of the church but it has been claimed to say they are just getting it out of their system before the solemnity of the Lenten season takes over. Getting drunk and being a glutton before lent is not the path god, but it is a way for the strict to let free before a time of sobriety and repentance is set upon the Christian faith.
In the streets of France Mardi Gras as a celebration has become popularized. Rowdy bands would play singing and dancing from house to house performing comical acts, exchanging food and feasting in fete of the holiday. The goal of Mardi Gras was to run something close to a charity to bring the communities together. Money and food would be collected for later distribution and a sense of community was provided for the participants involved. It helped to involve those of the neighborhood and promote sense of identity among the community.
Mardi Gras was known only as just that as it spread into New Orleans. Only in Louisiana did this terminology for this day become recognized. When the French settlers came to Louisiana, the Caribbean, Mississippi Valley and



Cited: Ancelet, Barry Jean, Jay D. Edwards, and Glen Pitre. Cajun Country. Folklife in the South Series. Ed. Lynwood Montell. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991. Bultman, Bethany Ewald. “A True and Delectable History of Creole Cooking.” American Heritage 38.1 (1986): 66–73. Gaudet, Marcia. “The New Orleans King Cake in Southwest Louisiana.” Mid-America Folklore 17.2 (1989): 114–21. Hill, Madalene, and Gwen Barclay. "From Acadian to Cajun." Herbarist.74 (2008): 68-73. Print. Kein, Sybil. Creole: The History and Legacy of Louisiana’s Free People of Color. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000. Kris, Ensminger. "Good Eating; Bourbon Street, N.Y.C." New York Times (2005): 10. Print. Stanonis, Anthony J. “Through a Purple (Green and Gold) Haze. New Orleans Mardi Gras in the American Imagination. 2005. Print. Sexton, Rocky L Tucker, Susan. New Orleans Cuisine: Fourteen Signature Dishes and Their Histories. Jackson: University of Mississippi, 2009. Print. Wilkerson-Freeman, Sarah. Fat Tuesday at Dixie’s. Jack Robinson’s New Orleans Mardi Gras Photographs, 1952-1955. (2006) 42-53. Print.

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