I confess until recently, I didn’t know much about Mardi Gras—only that it involved parades, beads, and a reputation for debauched behavior. Even though many cities worldwide celebrate Mardi Gras (which takes place tomorrow), New Orleans is perhaps the most well-known location for major Mardi Gras festivities. On our trip to New Orleans in November, we stopped in at Blaine Kern’s Mardi Gras World for a tour and sketching. Before that trip, I learned some fun facts about Mardi Gras and New Orleans' famous celebrations in particular. For instance: 

In New Orleans, Carnival season involves many invitation-only balls and supper dances hosted by “krewes” (private clubs). These balls are traditionally very formal, with elegant decorations, tableaux presentations, and dancing for the costumed and masked members and their guests. The krewes also stage more than 50 parades during the season in the city and suburbs of New Orleans.

Historically, masks were worn to many of the balls, and eventually it became traditional to wear a mask on the street on Mardi Gras day. However, in the early 19^th century, people behaved so outrageously while hidden behind masks that they were forbidden for decades!

Even though (or perhaps because?) this festival has roots in pagan celebrations, Pope Gregory XIII made Mardi Gras a Christian holiday in 1582 when he placed it on the calendar on the day before Ash Wednesday.

The first North American Mardi Gras took place when two French explorers and brothers, Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d’Iberville and Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, found the mouth of the Mississippi on Mardi Gras day (March 3) 1699. They made camp, named the spot Point du Mardi Gras, and celebrated. Bienville later went on to found New Orleans.

King cakes begin to be sold on Jan. 6 (also known as King’s Day). The brightly colored cakes have a small plastic baby baked inside them. According to tradition, whoever gets the baby in his or her piece has to buy the next cake.

King cake--Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons

On Mardi Gras day, there are parades all day long. Sometimes as many as two million people flood the streets of New Orleans to celebrate.

Revelers line the parade routes hoping for “throws”—beads, doubloons, cups and other souvenirs. According to several New Orleans web sites, it’s a myth that you have to expose a particular body part to get beads!

Louisiana is the only state in which Mardi Gras is a legal holiday.

The Rex organization, which debuted in 1872, is responsible for the official Mardi Gras colors (purple, green and gold), for starting daytime parades, and for the anthem of Carnival, “If I Ever Cease to Love.” Every year, the organization chooses an outstanding civic leader to reign over Mardi Gras, and this person is known as Rex, King of Carnival. Rex arrives by boat on the Monday before Mardi Gras, and is conveyed to City Hall in a carriage where he accepts the keys to the city from city leaders. On Mardi Gras day, he rides his float through the streets of his kingdom.

Laissez les bon temps rouler! (“Let the good times roll!”)

Do you celebrate Mardi Gras?

Want to know more? Check out Mardi Gras New Orleans  or New Orleans Online.

A wise friend told me that since the Age of Reason we’ve felt we had to explain everything, and that as a result we’ve forgotten the value of mystery. Here’s a poem by Lisel Mueller that celebrates mystery. Mueller is a Pulitzer Prize winning poet from Illinois. [Introduction by Ted Kooser.] 

Sometimes, When the Light 

Sometimes, when the light strikes at odd angles

and pulls you back into childhood

and you are passing a crumbling mansion

completely hidden behind old willows

or an empty convent guarded by hemlocks

and giant firs standing hip to hip,

you know again that behind that wall,

under the uncut hair of the willows

something secret is going on,

so marvelous and dangerous

that if you crawled through and saw,

you would die, or be happy forever.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©1980 by Lisel Mueller, from her most recent book of poems, Alive Together: New and Selected Poems, Louisiana State University Press, 1996. Poem reprinted by permission of Lisel Mueller and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2012 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.

Over lunch recently, a friend and I discussed why we don’t feel happier than we do. While we have the normal, everyday stresses most people have, we’re currently not coping with any major problems or crises. We figure our baseline level of happiness should be higher than it is. We weren’t complaining about it—just wondering why it was so. We felt like we should feel happier.

As I thought about this on my way home, I realized one reason could be that even though we don’t have any crises to deal with, we don’t have any major good things happening either. At this moment, our lives are filled with lots of work, a few annoyances and irritations, and not a lot of reward.

Reward. Perhaps that’s part of the key. We’re bulldozing through our tasks, not taking time to first notice and then reward our accomplishments and contributions. All work and no play make Jill an unhappy girl.

Most of us expect to bear a certain amount of responsibility and strive for achievement—after all, we’re grown ups, and grown ups take care of themselves and help others. However, when we don’t take time to notice and reward ourselves for what we accomplish, we risk burning out. If we wait for others to notice and reward, we’ll be waiting a long time. When was the last time someone complimented you for turning in a report on time, or even noticed that you mopped the kitchen floor? Just because something is expected of you doesn’t mean that it’s not worth rewarding. Most people I know tend to be pretty strict with themselves—work first (paid and non-paid), play/reward rarely…if ever.

I say it’s time to take rewards into our own hands, and to start doling them out liberally—to ourselves. Here are some basic principles to consider when thinking about rewards:

Behold the harvest:

This is why gardening and I are not the best of friends. I start off all filled with ambition and plans for delicious homegrown produce, and this is what I get:

Even though I love the feeling of picking vegetables and herbs from my own plants (a genuine simple pleasure), I am really not the world’s best gardener, and I think my time and money would be better spent by participating in a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) group. I’d like to think I have a green thumb, but the results prove otherwise.

Maybe I’ll stick to orchids.

Is there anything you would love to do better?

“Our consciousness rarely registers the beginning of a growth within us any more than without us: There have been many circulations of the sap before we detect even the smallest sign of the bud,”

—George Eliot, Silas Marner