Carnival

Carnival is a festive season which occurs immediately before Lent. It is traditionally held in areas with a large Catholic and, to a lesser extent, Eastern Orthodox makeup.

The word "carnival" originally meant "a farewell to meat," referring to the Christian tradition of giving up meat during Lent. Some etymologists instead trace it to the Latin "carnem levare" ("the taking away of meat"), which became "carnelevare" in Old Italian and later "carnevale" - meaning the popular "farewell to flesh" explanation is likely a folk etymology rather than the true origin.

Dominican friar and preacher Girolamo Savonarola at the 1497 carnival of Florence organised a "bonfire of the vanities" at the carnival celebration before Lent, in which Florentine luxury goods, works of art, pornographic books and gambling equipment were publicly burnt.

The Carnival of Venice was first documented in 1296, when the Venetian Senate proclaimed a public festival on the day before the start of Lent; it was, for centuries, the most famous carnival in the world. Its subversive nature is reflected in the many laws Italy passed over the centuries attempting to restrict celebrations and the wearing of masks, and the tradition was halted when Venice fell under Austrian control in 1798 before being revived in the late 20th century.

Carnival in Venice, by Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, 1750

The Carnival of Viareggio, the second most popular in Italy after Venice's, held its first masquerade in 1873 as a protest by the upper classes against heavy taxation, and in 2001 the town built a dedicated "Carnival citadel" for float-building and celebrations that continues to draw thousands of visitors each year.

The term “mark” originated from the carnival. When dishonest game operators found someone they could entice to keep playing their rigged game, they would "mark" the player by patting their back with a hand that had chalk on it. Other carnies would then keep an eye out for rubes with chalk marks.

The word Geek was originally an early 20th-century term for a carnival worker who was so unskilled that the only thing they could do at a carnival to attract a crowd was to bite off the heads of live animals such as chickens, snakes and rats and swallow them.

The Mardi Gras tradition, the French term for the final day of carnival, spread from Italy to Spain, Portugal and France, and from France on to New France in North America, eventually giving rise to famous celebrations such as those in New Orleans.

The street carnival of Rio de Janeiro is designated by Guinness World Records as the largest carnival in the world, attracting around two million people each day; its earliest form dates to 1641, when musical processions called "préstito" marked the coronation of King John IV of Portugal.

London's Notting Hill Carnival, founded in 1966 by Trinidadian activist Claudia Jones as a response to the racial tensions of the era, is now the second-largest carnival in the world after Rio and the largest street festival in Europe, drawing around two million attendees, 40,000 volunteers and 9,000 police each year.