Is it true that Mardi Gras is really a pagan holiday?
If you’ve ever been on Bourbon Street on Mardi Gras, as a drunken mob gathers around a Golden Calf beating drums and blowing horns and shouting “Hail to the Calf!”, you won’t need to ask that question. There is no doubt that the period of celebration that we call Carnival has roots in pagan end-of-winter and beginning-of-spring rituals reaching back thousands of years. These festivals – some of which can only be described as drunken orgies – existed across most lands that were being overtaken by the Christian Church, and like many other holidays and rites, the Church sought a balance between the old and new. Understanding that the party was not going to stop, the church placed limits on it, decreeing that it could not start until the finish of the Christmas holidays and had to end on the day before Ash Wednesday.
