Mardi Gras, also known as Fat Tuesday or Shrove Tuesday is March 4, 2025, the last day of the Carnival season. Mardi Gras concludes weeks of partying, parades and eating lots and lots of king cake that began with Carnival Season on Twelfth Night, January 6. Revelers party in anticipation of the austerity of the 40-day fasting of Lent which begins the next day on Ash Wednesday and leads up to Easter Sunday. At the heart of it, Mardi Gras is the secularization a Christian holiday traced to pagan spring and fertility rites dating back thousands of years that has become a popular cultural phenomenon worldwide.
And although Mardi Gras is today most closely associated with New Orleans, Louisiana, it is observed in hundreds of cities in more than fifty countries.
The origins of Mardi Gras can be traced to medieval Europe, passing through Rome and Venice in the 17th and 18th centuries to the French House of the Bourbons. From there, the traditional revelry of “Boeuf Gras,” or fatted calf, followed France to her colonies.
On March 2, 1699, French-Canadian explorer Jean Baptiste Le Moyne Sieur de Bienville arrived at a plot of ground 60 miles directly south of New Orleans and named it “Pointe du Mardi Gras” when his men realized it was the eve of the festive holiday. In 1702, Bienville also established “Fort Louis de la Louisiane” (which is now Mobile) and the tiny settlement of Fort Louis de la Mobile celebrated America’s very first Mardi Gras.
In 1704, Mobile established a secret society (Masque de la Mobile), like those that form our current Mardi Gras krewes. In 1710, the “Boeuf Gras Society” was formed and paraded from 1711 through 1861. In the Fat Tuesday procession, the parade Rex (king) would travel with an actual bull, draped in white and signaling the coming Lenten meat fast.
New Orleans was established in 1718 by Bienville and twelve years later Mardi Gras was celebrated openly in New Orleans, without the parades we know today. In the early 1740s, Louisiana’s governor, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, established elegant society balls, which became the model for the New Orleans Mardi Gras balls of today.
The earliest reference to Mardi Gras “Carnival” appears in a 1781 report to the Spanish colonial governing body. That year, the Perseverance Benevolent & Mutual Aid Association was the first of hundreds of clubs and carnival organizations formed in New Orleans.
There are many New Orleans Mardi Gras traditions including the Krewes known for their unique style of performance. Krewes generally begin working on their performance and costumes the year before. Many of them throw trinkets or Mardi Gras beads to the crowd.
Those King Cakes celebrate the Epiphany (Twelfth Night) and represent the three kings who brought gifts to Jesus with royal icing colors that have meaning: gold represents power, green is associated with faith, and purple illustrates justice. For luck there is a small plastic baby Jesus baked in the cake.
Two million beads are distributed in New Orleans and nationwide 25 million are thrown in the trash each year. Be kind to the planet and reuse or recycle your plastic beads and enjoy your Fat Tuesday meal.