Keep an Eye Out for Mardi Gras 2022 in Mobile

On Fat Tuesday, revelers dressed in traditional purple, green, and gold came out to celebrate New Orleans’ first full-dress Mardi Gras since 2020. Back-to-back parades and marches through the French Quarter and beyond are part of the excitement, with masks against COVID-19 required only in interior public venues.

Even with policemen working 12-hour shifts on Mardi Gras and the days coming up to the conclusion of the Carnival season, parade routes are shorter than normal since there aren’t enough police for the customary ones.

The resumption of Carnival season has provided a much-needed boost to commerce in New Orleans, whose iconic restaurants and music venues have been restricted or shuttered for months. You can also read more about Bath & Body Works Candle Day.

The throng on Sunday, when the massive Krewe of Bacchus paraded, “was a record for us in the 10 years we’ve been open,” said Thomas Houston, bar manager at Superior Seafood and Oyster Bar, which is located near the beginning of the shortened parade path.

Mobile, Alabama, that also bills itself as the native land of Mardi Gras, as well overlooked out on a full-fledged Carnival last year due to COVID-19, and perhaps some restaurant management says they still are experiencing problems filling jobs, going to lead to the unusual sight of empty seats whereas the people line up out through the door in some places.

Yet music already was booming downtown hours before the inaugural Fat Tuesday parade, as families staked out seats behind police lines on Government Street, the city’s major thoroughfare.

According to Mardi Gras New Orleans, the origins of the festival may be traced back to medieval Europe, moving via Rome and Venice in the 17th and 18th centuries until arriving at the French House of Bourbons.

The traditional carnival of the “Boeuf Gras,” or fatted calf, spread from here to France’s colonies.

Mardi Gras, the festival marking the day before Lent has long been linked with New Orleans, but it originally began in Mobile, Ala., in 1699. 

Large carnival festivities and rituals were prohibited from 1762, when the Spanish occupied the city, until 1800, and then from 1803 to 1837 when the United States took possession.