What’s Behind That Mardi Gras Mask?

January 6, also known as Kings Day or Epiphany, is the end of Christmastide and the beginning of what the church calls “Ordinary Time.” But in New Orleans, January 6 marks the start of the annual Carnival season, and there’s nothing “ordinary” about it. For two months every year, the greater New Orleans area becomes the epicenter of the party universe (more so than usual), culminating in the partiest party of them all, Mardi Gras (“Fat Tuesday”). We put away our ugly holiday sweaters and don outrageous costumes. Our red and green or blue and white decorations get traded for Carnival colors (purple for justice, green for faith, gold for power), and our Thanksgiving/Hanukkah/Christmas sweets give way to King Cake.

We plan our workdays and transportation routes around parade and ball schedules, parade floats being moved from dens to loading points, and street closures. We change our diets to be more porte and nonperishable, with no pretense of “healthy eating.” From storage, we pull our ladders and wagons, tables and tents, ice chests and folding chairs, readying them for transport to the neutral ground for people- and parade-watching. As the world watches, we celebrate our eccentricities, literally parade our craziness down the streets, and generally let our freak flags fly. Many, many people are masked on the streets, and all the riders on the floats are as well.

Being masked allows the wearer to be anonymous, to act out your secret fantasies, to get away with escapades that might not be quite so socially acceptable at any other time in the year or place in the world. For a while, those people who promoted tourism in the area encouraged people to come visit, do whatever you liked, and leave with your reputation intact. Some even called it “Mardi Gras syndrome.” (It’s kind of like “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”) As an out-of-towner, whatever you did remained a secret, your identity hidden behind from public view. Wearing a festive mask for Carnival season is fun, but wearing a figurative one day after day is a sign of something missing in your life, something that causes you to want to hide your true self. I talk more about this in “The Mask,” part of Jack In The Box.