I love a late Mardi Gras. My husband’s birthday is in early March, so it’s always fun to have built-in festivities that feel like we’re extending the celebration, and the weather is also typically warmer the later we get in the year, which makes standing outside for hours on end a whole lot more pleasant. (To say nothing of stretching out the timeline for acceptable King Cake consumption.)
In addition, the pace suits me – it feels like everything goes absolutely crazy starting in late October with Halloween chaos and then not slowing down until after Epiphany on Jan. 6, which is also my wedding anniversary. And while it’s definitely nice to have Carnival season to look forward to while taking down the Christmas decorations, it’s also good to have January and part of February to catch our breath before we start up with parades and festivals that continue unabated until it becomes officially too hot to leave the house.
That, however, is not the hand we’ve been dealt in 2024. Mardi Gras is on Feb. 13 this year, which means parades will basically be happening all this month and anyone over the age of 15 will be hungover for Valentine’s Day, which is also Ash Wednesday.
This is not the earliest Mardi Gras I’ve celebrated – I moved back home in January 2008, when Mardi Gras was Feb. 5, so I basically walked straight from freezing cold and gray Missouri into a purple, green, and gold fever dream and was screaming for beads and dancing to marching bands and shoving King Cake into my mouth well before I got all of my moving boxes unpacked – but it is still pretty darn early, much earlier than my ideal.
Still, though, who can help but get excited when the first King Cake appears in the break room at work or when you hear the brass section of a high school band really get going while you’re just driving home, navigating rush hour traffic on a chilly Wednesday night. Or when everyone starts dressing extra-festive and walking around just casually covered in glitter and comparing hot glue gun burns.
When I think back to the 10 winters I spent in Missouri, they are generally not happy memories. Yes, I did go sledding a few times, which was kind of fun, I guess; and snow is pretty while it’s falling; and I do like a nice roaring fire … but overall, I mostly remember the snow turning into huge black mountains on the side of the road, my hair freezing, my lips and hands cracking and bleeding, my toes going numb after I stepped in a pile of slush, slipping on ice, feeling like I could never get warm. Autumn was gorgeous, the holidays were a pleasant distraction, and then I was just cold and miserable and depressed until April. Having to watch Mardi Gras from afar only deepened my sorrow.
Winter here is:
A. Not as cold
B. Not as gray
C. Brightened up immeasurably by Carnival season
So even though I’d prefer Mardi Gras to fall later in the year than it does this time around, I will never forget that an early Mardi Gras is absolutely, hands-down, no question better than no Mardi Gras at all.
Happy Carnival season, everyone!
