A Trek through Mardi Gras

Written by: Danielle Abernethy
Monday, February 8th, 2010

This is a screenshot from my Mardi Gras Museum Box.

Next week is the biggest party day in New Orleans, although I suspect that due to the major victory last night they are already celebrating in a huge way. Mardi Gras though is more than a tourist draw to New Orleans. I decided to go ahead and look at how this event can be used with netTrekker and the classroom.

First, it’s not just held in New Orleans. Okay, I might be the ONLY person who really wasn’t up to date with this celebration and always just paired the two together. I did find out though, thanks to some great websites in netTrekker, that I actually attended several “Mardi Gras” events in Germany as a youth. There it’s called Fasching. Mardi Gras has been around since the 1200′s, maybe even before, and is the last ditch effort for good Christians to live on the wild side before they have to give up something to make themselves a better person and to repent for their sins for Lent and Ash Wednesday.

Wait, let’s back up. Mardi Gras is actually the name of Fat Tuesday, which is the day before Ash Wednesday, which is 47 days before Easter. This year, Fat Tuesday lands on February 16th. The carnivals, which start on the twelth day of Christmas, January 6, are the festivities that lead up to Fat Tuesday. They include parades, lavish costumes, masks (to hide the identity of highly respected community members as they let loose their wild side), and balls that are complete with a coronation of a King and Queen.

The official colors of Mardi Gras? Purple for justice, green for faith and yellow for power. These colors and their meaning came from Rex, the King of the Carnival in 1882. Rex was one of the founders of the original Krewes (I hope I read that right), and the Krewes are private organizations that gather to plan the parades, balls, and other festivities. They plan the themes for the event and crown the Royalty.

How does this translate to school? First, DO NOT encourage the students to run wild and party. I’m sure you already know that though. If I was teaching cultural geography with my students, I would divide them into different “krewes” to study how Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, is celebrated in the various countries. Each krewe would make a mini table top parade of at least 3 or 4 floats (to bring in the arts), a sample mask or costume, and maybe even a popular dish that is served during this time.

Another possibility is to create a Museum Box. I am waiting for mine to be approved, so I can’t share my actual sample. For those of you not familiar with Museum Box, it’s an online tool to add all the pieces of study for a project. Your box can have one or more cubes and several layers. You add the information for your project to the cube walls. I found images to represent the country or geographical region, wrote a document, created a video in PhotoStory, and added a link to where you can get more information. You can also add audio files and files. It was actually pretty fun, and a great way to share the knowledge I learned in netTrekker about Mardi Gras.

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