Top festivals

CARNIVAL TIME Mardi Gras 2020: How we got here

Mardi Gras, “the greatest free show on Earth,” is here again, with parades in Terrebonne and Lafourche just around the corner.

Newcomers and locals alike will find themselves in the midst of the biggest celebration of Carnival outside greater New Orleans.

An estimated 40,000-50,000 people will line the streets for Houma’s biggest parades, clamoring for beads and other trinkets tossed by float riders.

Some 30 parades are scheduled to roll through Fat Tuesday, Feb. 25. The first major parade, Houma's Krewe of Hercules, is scheduled to roll at 6 p.m. Feb. 14. The annual celebration originated in the calendar of the predominate Catholic Church. It was the last opportunity among the faithful to dance, party,

feast and drink before the restrictions of the 40-day Lenten season that starts Ash Wednesday and ends with Easter. The local Carnival tradition has roots well into the 1800s, when masked balls were common. Parades are mentioned in Houma and Thibodaux newspapers before the 1920s. In 1946, a group of Houma men planned the first parade of the Krewe of Houmas, which rolled on Fat Tuesday 1947. In the years since, a succession of krewes joined the celebration.

That 1947 parade featured a convertible bearing farmer Filhuacon “Tecon” Duplantis, whose irregular homemade parades, beginning in the 1920s, were credited with keeping the tradition alive. Tecon’s unofficial assemblies of decorated sugar-cane wagons and farm animals are not well documented, but they reportedly grew from a few people on foot to some 200 floats drawn by

Riders with the Krewe of Hyacinthians toss beads and trinkets to the crowd during last year’s parade in Houma. [THE COURIER AND DAILY COMET/FILE]

oxen and horses.

In 1955, the Krewe of Chronos of Thibodaux launched its first modern parade with a nod to the very first Thibodaux parade, reportedly in 1914, though that date has not been firmly established.

One local Mardi Gras tradition is edible. The king cake, a ring of yeasty cinnamon bread iced in purple, gold and green Carnival colors, is available at bakeries and groceries. Some ship the desert, complete with a plastic baby. Traditionally, the baby was hidden inside the cake, and whoever got that slice bought the next king cake.

LO CA L PA RA D E S C H E D U L E

Feb. 9: Des Petite Lions children’s parade, 1 p.m., Golden Meadow. Feb. 14: Hercules, 6 p.m., Houma. Feb. 15: Tee Caillou, noon, Chauvin; Le Krewe of Des T. Cajuns, noon, Larose, Aquarius, 6:30 p.m., Houma. Feb. 16: Hyacinthians, noon, Houma, followed by Titans; Versailles, noon, Larose; Shaka, 1:30 p.m., Thibodaux, followed by Ambrosia, 2 p.m. Feb. 21: Aphrodite, 6:30 p.m., Houma; Athena, 7 p.m., Golden Meadow. Feb. 22: Mardi Gras, 6:30 p.m., Houma; Apollo, noon, Lockport; Bon Temps, 6:30 p.m., Larose; Atlantis, noon, Golden Meadow, Grand Isle, Grand Isle, 1 p.m. Feb. 23: Terreanians, 12:30 p.m., Houma; Cleophas, 12:30 p.m., followed by Chronos, Thibodaux; Montegut Children’s Parade, 2 p.m.; Nereids, 6 p.m. Golden Meadow. Feb. 24: Cleopatra, 6:30 p.m., Houma. Feb. 25: Bonne Terre, 11 a.m., Montegut; Gheens, 11 a.m., Gheens; Houmas, 1 p.m., Houma, followed by Kajuns, Choupic, 1 p.m., Chackbay; Ghana, 1 p.m., Thibodaux; Neptune, noon, Golden Meadow.