Whether you call it carnival, carnival or Alemannic carnival. I must confess to you right at the beginning:I hate all of it. The stupid costumes, the annoying carnival parade, the horrible music (and I say that as someone who is quite inclined to pop music) ... The fifth season is anathema to me and the fact that I grew up in the Austrian carnival stronghold of Villach doesn't exactly help . But the story behind carnival and co. fascinates even me! Because like some other holidays (e.g. Christmas), the festival raises a very fundamental question:Is its origin actually Christian or is it pre-Christian? How did the carnival come about? Or to put it another way:Who would think of something so stupid?
Why do we celebrate carnival? And since when?
The answer to the first question actually seems obvious today. Mardi Gras or Mardi Gras (I know I'm mixing up expressions here, but I want everyone to understand me 😉 )... These customs obviously have a Christian background. After all, they usually take place in February and thus right before the start of the Christian Lent. People just want to have a good time and put themselves in a coma with mindless amounts of alcohol before having to abstain from all fun for 40 days. Not that too many people would do that today... Indirectly, carnival is related to Easter. Lent culminates in Easter, which in turn is the most important festival in Christianity!
But it's not that simple after all. Because many of the customs and rites, especially in the more traditional Fastnacht in southern Germany and Switzerland, go back to an older origin - to an almost universal festival of mankind even! Since ancient times, almost all societies have had rituals to drive out winter. These fell exactly at the time of carnival, usually in February. A connection emerges and one can also see in other ways how the winter is still being driven away with certain carnival traditions:noise, masks and rattling do exactly that. Today's carnival is a mixture. Pre-Christian customs combined with Christian ones and formed something new. Mankind has never been opposed to an alcohol-fuelled party.
The new medieval carnival
In this way, what we know today as carnival or carnival came into being in the High Middle Ages. Before Lent, this period of celebration became established sometime in the 12th or 13th century. And it was also tolerated by the church. The licentious nights leading up to Ash Wednesday were seen by church leaders as a lesson for the people of what the world would be like under the devil's rule. The beginning of orderly fasting should then lead them back into the kingdom of God. From this, a time of freedom for fools arose early on. The people were allowed to do many things during carnival that would otherwise have been unthinkable - such as making fun of the authorities or even crowning foolish bishops and popes. So they should let off steam on Shrove Monday. As long as Ash Wednesday was over, they should get away with it in the eyes of church and state.
This is how the carnival of the Middle Ages came about. But today we have not celebrated this for a long time. This has to do with the next development in the history of carnival in modern times. From the Renaissance onwards, the princely lords took up the tradition. Instead of a procession of the rabble, court celebrations now increasingly took place. After all, a similarly noble carnival had already been established in Venice and soon served as a model for the whole of Europe, including Germany. Celebrations were pushed back only in Protestant areas after the Reformation of the 16th century. Lent was simply no longer planned there and it was already known back then that the hard-working Protestants had no sense of fun. Either way:the simple festivals of farmers and citizens on the streets became increasingly rare over the course of modern times and Shrovetide more and more became a festival for the elite.
Carnival and Mardi Gras are celebrating their comeback
At this point you are probably asking yourself:When did our carnival of today come about? I have already mentioned that we no longer have the celebrations of the Middle Ages. Today's carnival doesn't have much to do with the courtly festivals of the 18th century, at least not if you look at the rowdy excesses in Cologne or Düsseldorf. As is so often the case, it was the 19th century when the old customs of carnival, Fastnacht and Co. were first unearthed. This is how the modern Cologne carnival came about in the 1820s in response to the city's annexation to Prussia. With the help of the hoped-for freedom of fools, they wanted to make fun of the new masters. Other places followed suit and thus the first carnival committees were formed in Bavaria and Austria, and in Swabia old carnival traditions were unearthed (although in some places these may have been preserved from the Middle Ages).
As an invention of the 19th century, carnival is not alone. During that time, many an old tradition was revived (as people liked to see at the time) or invented (as is more likely to be the case). In Bavaria, for example, traditional costumes are part of this and the Scottish kilt only became famous at that time. Starting in Cologne and other early strongholds, carnival soon spread to the rest of the continent. Outside of Europe, the Rio Carnival was the main attraction of the 20th century. This was probably not necessary in the past, since there is no reason to drive out a winter there in February. Another famous Mardi Gras festival in the New World is Mardi Gras in New Orleans - not coincidentally in a former French and therefore Catholic city.
Despite everything, I will celebrate this year's carnival as I always do:Not at all. But no matter how you celebrate - I wish you a lot of fun. And who knows:Maybe after the fifteenth Jägerbomb, in a quiet minute between the Fliegerlied and “Komm hol das Lasso raus”, you can even brag about your new knowledge of the history of carnival. So a hearty one:Alaaf, Helau, Narri Narro, Lei Lei … and so on.