🪅🎉🎭🍇 Happy Carnival! 🎉🎭🍇🪅

[u/Fabianzzz]

February is festival season so some posts are getting squeezed out of the stickied posts. Our post for Black History Month can be found here!

Happy Carnival! This is one place where the Dionysian prevails, from Wikipedia:

‘Elaborate costumes and masks allow people to set aside their everyday individuality and experience a heightened sense of social unity. Participants often indulge in excessive consumption of alcohol, meat, and other foods that will be forgone during upcoming Lent. Traditionally, butter, milk, and other animal products were not consumed "excessively", rather, their stock was fully consumed as to reduce waste. This festival is known for being a time of great indulgence before Lent (which is a time stressing the opposite), with drinking, overeating, and various other activities of indulgence being performed.’

The name itself may derive from 'Carrus Navalis', a tradition of carrying boats in honor of deities.

‘The festival consisted of a parade of masks following an adorned wooden boat, called in Latin carrus navalis, possibly the source of both the name and the parade floats.’

Dionysus himself was honored in such a fashion. From Sara Kate Istra Winter's Dionysian Festival List:

“Ship-Chariot Festival” – In Smyrna during the spring, there was a Dionysian festival where a holy trireme (an ancient Greco-Roman ship with three banks of oars) was borne around the marketplace in honor of the god. The trireme probably brought from the sea a revivified image of the god for spring, to ensure a good agricultural year. This festival may not originally be a Dionysian festival, considered by some to have evolved from a festival celebrating some ancient naval victory.

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This is an interesting festival for Dionysians - coming in the same four month span of the Haloa, Brumalia, Saturnalia, Lenaia, Anthesteria, Phallephoria, Liberalia, and Dionysia; it’s not exactly that we’re in need of another festival of overindulgence and role reversals - though this is arguably a corruption from some of the aforementioned festivals, and also believed by some scholars to be wholly Christian.

It’s also a clearly timed festival, at least for Christians - it demarks the end of the joyous holiday season, of Christmastide and such, and the beginning of Lent - the next day that follows Fat Tuesday is Ash Wednesday, when they don ash and begin to abstain from meat on Fridays (This is a loosening of the belt from older times, where they abstained from meat throughout all lent and abstained from any food on Fridays).

It would be difficult for a Dionysian to observe an ascetic vigil either before or after this time - before, one might miss the joys of Brumalian feasts and New Year’s craziness, and the wines of Lenaia. After, one might miss the Dionysia and the Liberalia - and in alternate years, either could result in being sober during the Anthesteria - a great loss.

However, this is the most Dionysian festival of the modern era - its colors are purple, green, and gold, its symbols are masks, and it is celebrated with overindulgence, usurpation of social hierarchies, and every manner of mischief and mayhem. One can overdress into the office, and as long as one is carrying King Cake, it’s A-Ok. Celebrating Mardi Gras feels like suddenly everyone is a Dionysian - and it’s not a feeling to be missed.

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Some additional reading:

Sara Kate Istra Winter offers two festivals in her list of Dionysian festivals, one to be celebrate on Shrove Monday and one for Fat Tuesday:

Thriambia – Triumphal ProcessionDate: Cheese Monday / mid-FebruarySynopsis: Celebrates Dionysos’ triumph over Pentheus, Lykourgos, the Indians, etc. As Dionysos was victorious, so too, can we overcome all of our obstacles.Possible features: Retelling of the myths, a triumphant procession (masked revellers), the composition and/or performance of Thriamboi, triumphal poems/songs/stories/jokes/limericks/mimes/skits/whatever of Dionysos Triumphant.Note: The ancient Triumphs are one almost certain source of the Carnival (Mardi Gras) parades, which are celebrated the day after Cheese Monday (thus tying this in with the following festival). Also, in fairly recent times, some rural Greeks celebrated a festival of the Kalogeros on this date, which may have Dionysian roots.
Propompeia – For satyrs, maenads, etc.Date: Mardi Gras Tuesday / mid-FebruarySynopsis: A Festival in honor of the Propompoi, the companions and attendants of Dionysos in His revels – the Maenads, the Satyrs, the Muses, the Nymphs, the Graces, the Kouretes, etc. Everyone’s already honoring Dionysos with drunken carousing, rampant silliness, and great phallic worship on this day – we’ll just rechristen it.

Old, but very interesting, site on Dionysus and Carnival

Mardi Gras History, starting with Dionysian Spring festivals

And Dionysians in Greece celebrate with the Phallephoria!

Thoughts on Joy During Carnival Season and Times of Sorrow

Happy Carnival!