In New Orleans, a town famous for its French Quarter and Bourbon Street, for hot Cajun and Creole cuisine and for cool Dixieland jazz, one event surpasses them all as the city's legendary signature piece - Mardi Gras! It's a season of revelry and romance, of madness and music, of parades and parties, of comic costuming in the streets and grandiose private masquerade balls. Mardi Gras is a time when the gaudy and the gorgeous all come together for one gigantic blowout. From the regal to the ridiculous, New Orleans Mardi Gras has it all!

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Since the first modern-day pageant was presented in 1857, with time outs occasioned by World Wars, more than 1,800 Mardi Gras parades have been staged in metro New Orleans. The festival that was conceived as a party the city threw for itself has grown into one of the world's grandest tourist attractions. Yet for all its international fame, it can be difficult for a first-timer to grasp. The celebration even has its own vocabulary, and to make matters a bit more confusing, Mardi Gras is scheduled on a different date each year! Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Mardi Gras, however, is its connection to religion.

THE BASICS

Carnival, loosely translated from Latin as "farewell to flesh," is the season of merriment that starts in New Orleans each year on January 6, the Twelfth Night feast of the Epiphany - the day the three kings visited the Christ Child. Mardi Gras, French for Fat Tuesday, is the single-day climax of the season. While Mardi Gras undoubtedly has pagan, pre-Christian origins, the Catholic Church legitimized the festival as a brief celebration before the penitential season of Lent. The date of Mardi Gras is set to occur 46 days before Easter and can fall as early as February 3 or as late as March 9.

During the 12 days preceding Mardi Gras, more than 60 parades and hundreds of private parties, dances and masked balls are annually scheduled in the metro area. Fat Tuesday is a legal holiday in New Orleans, a day when half the town turns out in costume to watch the other half parade! Then, promptly at midnight, the party's over, as Ash Wednesday ushers in the austere Lenten season.

The single custom that most distinguishes Mardi Gras parades is that of throws - trinkets tossed from the floats - which turn New Orleans parades into crowd participation events unmatched anywhere. "Throw Me Something Mister" is the battle cry of the million-plus people who line the parade routes. Most popular among the millions of throws are those that illustrate the organization's logo and the parade's theme, including plastic drinking cups, medallion necklaces and colorful aluminum coins called doubloons.