It's Mardi Gras time!

This year Mardi Gras is February 28, the fat and festive Tuesday immediately preceding the abstemious and austere Ash Wednesday that begins the holy season of Lent. Celebrations this year in New Orleans, abbreviated but not abandoned, will culminate on Fat Tuesday, of course, and all eyes in America will focus yet again on what's left of New Orleans as the town pulls itself together for the 2006 celebrations.

Before Katrina, New Orleans' Mardi Gras was all about conspicuous excess. Beads, doubloons, and trinkets galore tossed from ornate floats by festooned and costumed people made most other parades pale by comparison. Hordes of faithful who made the pilgrimage to New Orleans and lined the processional routes reached toward the heavens to snag some of the many and varied relics of Mardi Gras.

Many revelers find it hard to believe this celebration has significant religious roots. Others sing out loud and clear, "Give Me That Old Time Religion!" The origin of Mardi Gras, like so many other things religious, is shrouded in mystery and mystique. But one thing we know for sure: It was a prelude to the beginning of Lent that has through the centuries moved from delightful to debaucherous.

In the 15th century some church officials worked hard to suppress these celebrations. They thought Mardi Gras had gotten out of hand. In addition to self-indulgence, boisterous games and satirical theatrics were part of the celebration. One wonders if church officials, finding themselves the object of some Mardi Gras skits, worked extra hard to eliminate such criticism.

Geography gives us the first clue to the history of Mardi Gras in Louisiana. Nineteen years before the port colony of New Orleans was founded in 1718, Pierre Le Moyne named his encampment "Pointe du Mardi Gras" some 60 miles downstream from present day New Orleans. In 1743 the governor of Louisiana, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, established society balls that evolved into part of Mardi Gras celebrations.

The first recorded street parades made their appearance about this time also. American Indians, Creoles, slaves, society people, all sorts of New Orleanians participated. These people of God were part of a celebrative fabric that reflected both the realities and the fantasies of most every social group.

This year's observance, though scaled down, reflecting the current grim realities of the city, will also mirror the wishes of this hopefully eternal city for the resurrection that always comes at the end of each Lenten season.

The show must go on.

PETER GILMOUR ([e-mail]) teaches at the Institute of Pastoral Studies of Loyola University Chicago.