Shrove Tuesday: Carnival against the war

In Cologne, one of the most important days of the carnival is Rose Monday, with the parade of floats. This year the party of Carnival it turned into a protest against the Russian invasion. According to the committee that organizes the Carnival in the German city at noon there were 150 thousand people, all in the street to give a sign of solidarity to theUkraine. Also to Veniceon the eve of Shrove Tuesday the masks danced against the war.

In most of Italy and the world (excluding the diocese of Milan where it continues until Saturday) today is the last day of Carnival. From tomorrow we enter Lent and for Ash Wednesday the Pope has invited the world to fast for peace.

Carnival

Carnem Levare. Remove the meat in Latin. Hence the name carnival which, originally, remembered above all the last day of the period preceding Lent, characterized by fasting. The festival is closely linked to the Catholic tradition and its timing is dictated by the arrival of Easter.

At your place

There are more assumptions about the beginning of the carnival. Who says the day of Boxing Day, who after January 6, who signals the 17th, also in January. Certainly the closure, with the only exception of the Ambrosian rite. The days of greatest celebration are usually the last: Shrove Thursday and Shrove Tuesday that precedes Ash Wednesday and officially opens the Lent. However, it is a movable feast because it is linked to Easter, that is, the Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox. This year is April 17th.

Ambrosian rite

The Ambrosian rite churches grant four more days to Carnival, until the eve of the first Sunday of Lent. An extension due to the wait for Bishop Ambrose who, returning from a pilgrimage, made the Milanese wait another 4 days after Shrove Tuesday.

Shrove Tuesday

Why is he fat, like on Thursdays? In these days we ate all the best things left in the house and that could not be consumed during the abstinence period of Lent. In addition to French Mardi Grasthe day before Ash Wednesday is known in Anglo-Saxon countries as Shrove TuesdayTuesday of confession, and in the US also as Pancake day. There are real running races with a pan and a pancake to be turned at least three times in the way. Tradition seems to remember a woman who ran with the pan and finished cooking in the street because she was late for mass.

The ancients

The saturnalia of Rome, linked to purification rites, coincide by period with our Carnival, but are more connected to the passage of the old and new year that fell in these months for the Roman calendar. Even the Greek Dionysians are similar holidays, in which social rules were temporarily eliminated: the slave becomes master, the poor rich. A sort of chaos before the new order that remained for the whole following year with the old year represented by a man covered in goat skins who was beaten with sticks.

Renaissance

These are the years of carnival songs and parties organized at the court of the Medici, whoever wants to be happy may be years. Carnival is a Florentine tradition of the Renaissance and also of the Rome of the popes.

Confetti

Enrico Mangilli da Crescenzago, an engineer by profession, invented these pieces of paper in the nineteenth century, who marketed the circles of the paper used for the breeding of silkworms. Since the Renaissance there has been a confusion of this term with confetti, sometimes with seeds of the coriander plant instead of almonds, which were thrown during the Carnival celebrations.