What is Carnival?
Carnival is the festive season before Lent in the Christian calendar, a time of parades, masks, costumes, music and feasting before the forty days of fasting that lead to Easter. Its best-known forms include Venice, Rio de Janeiro, Cologne and Mainz in Germany, Nice and Dunkirk in France, Binche in Belgium and the Fasnacht of Basel. Each has its own characters and food. The season has no single start: in German-speaking Europe and the Netherlands it traditionally opens on 11 November at 11:11, in other places after Epiphany, and in some only in the last week before Lent.
The final days, Fat Thursday, Carnival Sunday, Monday and Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras, meaning Fat Tuesday), are the high point. On this site Carnival is a public holiday in Andorra, Bolivia, Ecuador and Haiti, and a day off or optional holiday in places such as Brazil, Portugal and Uruguay; in Latin America it usually covers the Monday and Tuesday. Practices differ from town to town. Doughnuts, fritters, pancakes and sausages are typical foods, and in some places the season ends with a symbolic burial of Carnival.
Why it is observed
A pre-Lenten festival of excess took shape in the Christian Middle Ages, though winter and spring festivals of masks and role reversal are much older. Meat, eggs, butter and other foods forbidden in Lent were used up beforehand, which explains the rich dishes. The word carnival is usually traced to the Late Latin phrase carne levare, 'to remove meat', and a popular folk etymology of carne vale, 'farewell to meat'; scholars have proposed other roots, so the origin is not settled. Because the date follows Easter, Shrove Tuesday can fall anywhere from 3 February to 9 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. Andorra's holiday on this site is the Monday 48 days before Easter (8 February in 2027), and the Carnival days off listed for countries such as Bolivia, Brazil and Ecuador also follow Easter.
How it is observed
In Andorra the Carnival Monday closes banks, offices and schools, and local events are held around the Carnival weekend. In Bolivia, Ecuador and Uruguay the Monday and Tuesday before Ash Wednesday are days off, and in Brazil they are optional holidays (a public holiday only in some places, for example Rio de Janeiro on the Tuesday in the data used here). In most other countries Carnival is a normal working day, though schools may close for a week in some regions. Big events in Venice, Cologne or Rio draw large crowds, so hotels there fill early. Dates move with Easter, so check each year, and pay and time off depend on the country, region and contract.
Sources
Andorra