After several homes are visited and the ingredients are gathered, the masked runners join together with the rest of the community in feasting.
Community Reaffirmation
Speaking in an interview with the Pulse of the Planet radio program, Ancelet said the Cajun Mardi Gras celebration can be traced back to pre-Christian European rituals of institutionalized fasting at a time when food supplies were dwindling.
"Everybody was going to have to make do with what was left. And a good way to make sure that everybody fasts together, that nobody cheats, is to get everybody to feast together right before then, because it creates a sense of solidarity," he said.
Ancelet added that the Mardi Gras also reflects cultural rituals related to celebrating the death and rebirth of nature. The brightly costumed, masked revelers climbing up in trees and running around the yard appear to be "living blossoms."
This lively spectacle is all part of the Mardi Gras design to bring the community together and lift it out of the winter doldrums, Ancelet said. According to Lindahl, community symbolism is found everywhere in the celebrations.
"Take, for example, the fact that, in most communities, the Mardi Gras begins in the center of town and then makes a circle around the outskirts. Here, the Mardi Gras is literally marking its territory with the horses' hooves, riding the boundary of its shared interest," Lindahl said.
Other examples include the gathering of ingredients for a gumbo to be freely shared. In many towns the Mardi Gras revelers stop at the local retirement community, not to beg for food but to entertain and give thanks for the tradition.
"There's a deep understanding in many of the towns where Mardi Gras is celebrated that this festival is a gift from the older people to the younger. A gift that represents the strongest and best ties within the community. A gift that is the duty of a good Mardi Gras to pass on to all the younger members of the community," Lindahl said.
Ancelet points to his essay "We Love Our Mardi Gras: The Social Implications of the Mardi Gras and How We Read It," to find examples of community bonds strengthened by Mardi Gras.
In the essay Ancelet recounts the tale of a run organizer who dispatched a resupply of beer when he realized the Mardi Gras revelers were running short.
When the Mardi Gras group reached this organizer's house, the media was following along. They documented what was considered a spectacular chicken chase—given, apparently, out of gratitude for the beer. But the authentic show of community, according Ancelet, came long after the media left and lingering members of the Mardi Gras gathered to give thanks.
"They spontaneously surrounded [the organizer], and those on the outside joined hands to form a tight circle around him, something like a bunch of asparagus, and the whole group began jumping, lifting him in the middle. It occurred to me that this, as much as the chicken chase, was what the visit was all about, indeed what Mardi Gras is all about," he writes.
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