Carnival Day

What the day is

Carnival Day is observed on February 26. The word carries two meanings in English, and the imported description of this record leans toward the traveling funfair. The February date sits inside the Carnival season proper, the stretch before Lent, so this entry covers the festival.

Origin and background

Carnival is the period of feasting and licensed misrule that precedes the Lenten fast in the Christian calendar. Its timing is therefore governed by Easter and moves each year, running up to the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. The name is usually derived from Latin roots meaning the removal of meat, marking what is about to be given up.

The practical origin is straightforward. Before refrigeration, a household facing forty days without meat, eggs, butter and fat had to use up what it held, and eating the lot in a few days of feasting is the sensible response. Pancake traditions across northern Europe come from the same arithmetic.

What grew on top of that is more interesting. Carnival developed as a period of sanctioned inversion, when masks concealed rank, ordinary hierarchies were mocked, and behavior otherwise punished was tolerated for a few days. It belongs with the Feast of Fools and the other midwinter reversals, and historians have long argued about whether such rituals released pressure that might otherwise have burst, or rehearsed the idea that the order could be turned upside down at all.

The largest celebrations now are in the Americas, above all in Brazil and across the Caribbean, where European Carnival met African traditions carried by enslaved people and produced something distinct, with the music, masquerade and parading of those festivals owing as much to that inheritance as to anything European.

How to take part

• Find out when Carnival actually falls this year, since it moves with Easter.
• Use up the rich food in the house, which is the original point.
• Read about the Caribbean and Brazilian traditions rather than only the European ones.
• Wear a mask, which is the oldest element of it.
• Go to a local parade if there is one, which there often is.