A great lead in to Lent

SOUL FOOD

Tuesday was Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday and Lent in

many Western churches.

Since I no longer keep time on the calendar of Western

Christendom, it almost slipped by me. Great Lent in the Eastern

Orthodox Church will begin Sunday.

The “shrove” in Shrove Tuesday is derived from the word

“shriving,” a now otherwise archaic word for confession and

absolution. The day is a last call of sorts for Christians to come

clean of their sins before beginning their penitential preparation

for Easter on Ash Wednesday.

It has also long been a major day of hoopla, often the culmination

of weeks of last-ditch merriment, a day to eat, drink and be merry --

for Christian and non-Christians alike -- before the 40-day or longer

period of fasting until Easter.

The party originated as a way to get rid of the foods, the meats,

fats, eggs and dairy products, not eaten during Lent. In Venice and

Rio it’s Carnival, some say from the Italian vale carne, goodbye

meat, others say from the Latin, carrus navalis, ship of fools. There

is no doubt that the revelry produces its share of, at least

temporary, fools.

In Germany it’s called Fastnacht or Fasching, the night before the

fast. In my hometown of Mobile, Ala. it’s called Mardi Gras, French

for Fat Tuesday, fat Tuesday for the practice of using up all fatty

foods on hand in the larder before Ash Wednesday and Lent.

Whether in Rio, Venice, Munich or Mobile, the celebrations are,

more and more, a time for all-out raising Cain.

In Mobile, which lays claim to being “the home of the Mardi Gras,”

a man named Cain, by quirk and happenstance, is credited with saving

the party that almost pooped out.

The traditional, pre-Lenten celebration in Mobile, claims the city

on its Web site, goes back 1703, back to its days as a French colony.

That year the Cowbellian de Rakin Society made merry in the streets

with something less than traditional instruments -- rakes, hoes and

cowbells “borrowed,” apparently, from the local hardware store.

It was 154 years later, by the reckoning of the city of Mobile,

that the Cowbellian de Rakin Society traveled to the port city of New

Orleans to help it establish the roots of its own Mardi Gras.

The festivities in Mobile, it seems, held up well year after year,

until the Civil War put a damper on them.

After the war, a market clerk named Joseph Stillwell Cain could

not bear the specter of his fellow confederates’ post-war

disillusionment and depression. So in 1866, he determined to raise

their spirits. It was high time, Cain figured, to bring Mardi Gras

back to the city of Mobile. He decorated a coal wagon, donned the

ceremonial dress of the Chickasaw Indians, dubbed himself Chief

Slacabormorinico, hitched his mule to his wagon and, much like the

Cowbellian de Rakin Society before him, took to the streets with his

one-float parade.

And that’s how a man named Cain single-handedly saved the day and

the Mardi Gras, which the city’s Web site says was reborn in Mobile

in 1886.

What happened in the 20 years between Cain’s 1866 one-coal-wagon

parade and the Mardi Gras’ rebirth in 1886 is not quite clear, but

Cain continued to participate in the parade he revived until he died

at the age of 72.

I never heard this story while growing up, but I looked forward to

Mardi Gras every bit as much as Christmas, if not for noble reasons.

Kings and queens wore bejeweled crowns and ermine mantles. They

reigned high atop the floats. Just seeing them made my spirits soar.

Their court and their fools showered us below with gold and silver

doubloons, taffy, strings of jewel-colored, Czechoslovakian-glass

beads and moon pies.

Booths along the street sold bight plaster figurines,

glitter-splashed piggy banks and Kewpie dolls in feathers and

sequins. There were costumes and noisemakers and none of the macabre

of Halloween. Mardi Gras was all treats and no tricks.

As an elementary-school girl, riding high down the street on an

uncle’s shoulders, Mardi Gras was my stop by seventh heaven before

heading toward Easter.

It’s a stop I sure miss.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She

can be reached at [email protected].