Mardi Gras!

A Little Background...for those who've never experienced it..

(and if you've already survived a Mardi Gras season....scroll down to the pictures)

The Big Party....

It all starts on Twelfth Night, January 6th, (the twelfth night after Christmas) and continues on to Mardi Gras Day....the parties, the parades, the balls.

Mardi Gras...translation "Fat Tuesday", it's always the day before Ash Wednesday...the day Lent starts, soooo....we're gonna party hearty and live it up before we start being good...well, that's the basic premise anyway!

There are day parades, and night parades and whole families dressing up in costume to go see the parades, and people on floats throwing strings of beads and doubloons, cups and toys, and people scrabbling to catch them as if they were great treasure! It's loads of fun and laughs for all ages.

The balls are the formal part of the celebration. The men wear their tux's and the women dress to the "nines" and the court is presented, all in Formal Pageantry, and then they all party!

Here are some typical Mardi Gras pictures to let you get the "flavor" of what it's all like~

Note: You may have noticed that the main background colors on this page, (or any Mardi Gras page for that matter!) are purple, green and gold. Those are the traditional Mardi Gras colors, Purple for Justice, Green for Faith and Gold for Power~

~A Night Parade~(click on pictures to see full size version)

This is a "composite" picture of two of our celebrity "Kings" this year, Quincy Jones and Harry Connick, Jr.~

Here come the floats! Get ready to catch those beads flying through the air~

Bands from Jr.High and High Schools all over the U.S. are invited to march in the parades~

Mardi Gras!...continued..Click Here!

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