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Cajun Chicken Chases Spice Up Rural Mardi Gras |
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John Roach National Geographic News |
| February 7, 2005 |
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As festive parades spark a raucous blur of purple, green, and gold on the streets of New Orleans, Louisiana, a different kind of Mardi Gras will blossom in the state's rural Cajun communities. Mardi Gras is French for Fat Tuesday, the final day of the weeks-long Carnival season of feasting and celebration. For Christian revelers, it is the final blowout before Ash Wednesday and the pre-Easter penitential season of Lent. The New Orleans version of Mardi Gras is well known for the beads, cups, and coins that "krewes" on passing floats toss to the crowds pleading, "Throw me something, mister." The rural version is becoming known for its often comedic, chaotic, and beer-fueled chicken chases. Barry Jean Ancelet is a professor of French and folklore at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette and host of a weekly live Cajun radio show broadcast from Eunice. He said the Cajun Mardi Gras is much more than chicken chasing and beer drinking. "It is a reaffirmation of community. It is a source of homemade entertainment. It has religious, social, and psychological value for all participants, those running and those receiving," he said. Carl Lindahl is a professor of English and folklore at the University of Houston in Texas. He has has extensively studied the Cajun Mardi Gras celebration in the town of Basile and agrees with Ancelet's view. "Mardi Gras is about community ties, and almost all outsiders miss this," he said. Cajun Mardi Gras Ancelet describes the Cajun Mardi Gras as controlled chaos. Starting early in the morning, masked revelers go from house to house in the countryside. They beg for ingredients and money to make a gumbo that will later be enjoyed by the entire community. Some people give rice, flour, onions, or money—but one of the ideal ingredients, according to Ancelet, is a live chicken. The chicken is tossed out into an open field. The revelers, many of whom start drinking beer early in the morning, are expected to catch it. The ensuing chaos is mixed up in a swirl of mock trials, abductions, tree climbing, singing, and other acts of tomfoolery, all of which serve to infuse a burst of energy into the doldrums of winter, Ancelet said. According to Lindahl, much of the clowning around is associated with skills the region associates with manhood—the ability to ride a horse, dance, sing, play and take jokes, and drink a lot. "During Mardi Gras, young men try to do all of these things in greatly exaggerated form at the same time, all day long," he said. "The chaos comes in part from the attempt to do all these things at once." 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. Don't Miss a Discovery Sign up our free newsletter. Every two weeks we'll send you our top news by e-mail (see sample). |
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