The history of carnival... we could be here all day!
Carnival is basically cultural tradition. Ask people why they do they things they do at any given celebration you'll probably get a shrug. "It's our tradition" they'll say, while wearing a scary mask or cutting off your tie... but only on the Thursday before carnival. There's a long history for each of these traditions, for the celebration - and we'll get into it, later - but for today I want to have a look at Carnival's most ancient roots.
Sad to say, but the origins of Carnival are basically impossible to track before a certain point. At that point, they start to diverge wildly and are rather speculative. The history of Carnival is closely linked to the history of Easter, itself a bit of a mystery beyond a certain point. After all, it's the date of Easter which sets the date of Lent, the 40-day period of Christian grief, and of Ash Wednesday, the official start of Lent. Ash Wednesday, in turn sets the date of Mardi Gras, [Fat Tuesday] and Rosenmontag [Rose Monday] the days immediately preceding. This is why in countries that do Carnival closer to the traditional way, the dates bounce around year-to-year.
But why Easter? And was there something before this? You might of heard at some point that carnival goes back even further than the concept of Christianity itself. And that's true. Sort of. Maybe. The truth is that nobody really knows for sure. So i'll lay out what my research has uncovered and let you decide what you find most convincing!
(My personal theory is that carnival was invented by the Würmer)
Come with me now... before floats filled the streets, before there were masked revellers stumbled through the streets of Mainz, Venice or Rio de Janeiro. Before the Carnival clubs of the late 1800s, before the medieval festivals like the feast of fools, to the early days of Christianity in Europe.
After Emperor Constantine declared that the Roman empire would convert to Christianity in 313 CE, scholars of the religion had to meet in special religious councils - Referred to as Synods - to debate areas of the doctrine which introduced uncertainty into practices. One of the most famous of these Synods was the First Council of Nicaea, held in 325 CE where church leaders set standards that dealt with, amongst other issues, the date of Easter.
The 'correct' date of Easter - one of Christianity's holiest festivals - is known as the Easter controversy and subject to a fair amount of interpretation. It is still, to this day, a matter over which different Christian denominations argue over. The details of why are dense, confusing and not particularly to the rest of this story. The main point was that method of calculating when Easter takes place was set at the First Council of Nicaea and broadly remains in place amongst many Christians (those of and derived from Catholic traditions i.e. protestants), to this day. As described, the date of Easter sets the period of lent, which sets the dates of carnival.
So that's the why of the when, but what about the characteristics of carnival itself? The conversion of the Romans to Christianity might be key to understanding the origins.
Before Christianity Rome, of course, had its own system of beliefs. With these beliefs came their own practices: festivals held at certain times of the year with their own rituals and traditions, some of which we might recognize as being somewhat carnival-like.
The most commonly pointed-to candidates for going on to inspire carnival are Saturnalia, Bacchanalia, and Purim.
Saturnalia was a festival held in December to honour the Roman god, Saturn. While no records describing the complete set of practices of Saturnalia exist and the celebrations tended to vary over the vast amounts of time, it still contains many of the features we associate with modern carnival. Most notably the loosening (or downright suspension of) the social norms of the time: street partying, wearing of strange, colorful clothing (and later masks) and role-playing, where Roman masters treated their slaves to a meal in a manner they would expect to be served, were all said to be features of the festival. Another feature is the so-called 'King of the Saturnalia', a role which was elected amongst festival-goers to rule over the ceremonies for the proceedings. This bares a fairly striking resemblance to later conceptions and roles of the kings of carnival, still done in many traditions today.
Saturnalia is also thought to be a Roman version of similar Greek festival, in that the Romans celebrated Saturnalia as an homage to a time where the Gods reigned over the world. They likely adapted some of the practices of some of these festivals, while adding their own spins - an idea which is evident when looking at carnival celebrations today.
The other big (but not mutually exclusive) idea is that carnival arose from the Bacchanalia of Rome. Bacchanalia were unofficial, private festivals, allegedly with all sorts of drinking and crazy traditions, held by members of cults of certain Gods, most notably Bacchus. Again, these are thought to be related similar Greek traditions, especially the Dionysia, which were festivals which also featured the popular election of a master of the ceremonies and were held around March-April in Athens, and generally around January time in other parts of ancient Greece, making them line up nicely with modern Easter and carnival traditions.
A third theory goes through Ancient Egypt, It holds that carnival is a distance cousin of the Sham El-Nessim festival, which is still celebrated in Egypt to this day. Sham El-Nessim always falls on the Monday after Easter, according to its Coptic origins. In ancient times the festival, then known as Shemu or 'Low Water' in reference to the low level of the Nile, was celebrated at the beginning of the Egyptian Spring, when the weather began to get better and the river would soon flood - leading to the next harvest. It is believed that Shemu is adopted by the Greeks in the 300 BCE when Alexander the Great conquered the lands, importing the concept - and perhaps some of the traditions - back to Greece.
Little hard evidence supports these theories. If you think about it hard enough, you'll notice that none of them are actually mutually exclusive. Shemu could have inspired Dionysia, which inspired the Romans' festival; remixing and adapting each time over centuries until a kind of proto-carnival was born. Then later, after the conversion of Rome to Christianity, this proto-carnival was folded into Christian doctrine and later formalized at the Council of Nicaea.
After all, we know that traditions of Easter and Christmas themselves were assimilated from pre-existing pagan festivals into Christianized versions of themselves, or that Roman festivals were assimilated from Greek or Celtic celebrations.
Look at all the vastly different celebrations that are called carnival today. Some are explicitly Christian, some are secular. Many were inspired by their neighbours, and grafted onto other important of their histories: national independence, emancipation, harvest time. Some incorporate elements of their own folklore to create something that's uniquely theirs, but still carnival.
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