What is Carnival?
Carnival is the festive season before Lent in the Christian calendar, a period of parades, masks, costumes, music, dancing and feasting before the forty days of fasting and penance that precede Easter. Its best-known forms include the Carnival of Venice, the Rio Carnival, Cologne and Mainz in Germany, Nice and Dunkirk in France, Binche in Belgium and Basel's Fasnacht in Switzerland. Each has its own traditions, characters and food. The season has no single start date: in some regions it opens on 11 November or on Epiphany, and in others only in the last week before Lent.
The final days, called Fat Thursday, Carnival Sunday and Monday, and Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras, meaning Fat Tuesday, are the high point. In Andorra, where Carnival is a holiday in the calendar used on this site, it is celebrated with parades, costumes and parties, and with traditional sweets and special dishes. Practices differ from town to town, and so does the name of the day on which people get time off. Food and drink are an important part of the days: doughnuts, fritters, pancakes and sausages are typical, and in many places the festivities end with a symbolic burial of Carnival on the night before Ash Wednesday.
Why it is observed
The custom of a pre-Lenten festival of excess is medieval in its Christian form, though similar spring and winter festivals of masks and misrule existed in antiquity. The idea was to use up meat, eggs, butter and other foods that were forbidden during Lent, which explains the association with rich dishes such as pancakes, doughnuts and sausages. The word carnival is usually traced to Latin or medieval Italian phrases about removing or farewelling meat, although the exact origin is debated. Because the date depends on Easter, the carnival season may start anywhere between early February and early March.
How the date is set
Carnival is tied to Easter. It ends on Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday, which is 47 days before Easter Sunday, and the season builds up to it over the preceding days and weeks. On this site Andorra's holiday is the Monday, 48 days before Easter, so the date moves from year to year with Easter.
How it is observed
In Andorra the Carnival holiday means closed banks, offices and schools, and the main events are parades and parties in the parishes, often held around the Carnival weekend. In other countries, Carnival is not a day off at all, or only in certain regions, and schools may close for a week. The best-known events, such as Venice or Cologne, attract large crowds, and hotels in those cities fill early. Because the date moves with Easter, check the dates for the current year. Pay and time off depend on the country, the region and the contract.
Andorra