Card & Party Factory in Abilene Featured in the Abilene Reporter-News

February 20, 2012

Celebration of Mardi Gras in West Texas not as nutty as in Nawlins

Alcohol gets the boot at dance

• By Brian Bethel
• Posted February 17, 2012 at 11:20 p.m.

Kathy Stevens was expecting a good crowd and a good time at the Wagon Wheel’s country-western Mardi Gras dance Friday night, complete with beads, masks and even gumbo and rice.

But it wasn’t going to be anything like Bourbon Street, she was quick to add when talking about the dance, referring to what is more or less Mardi Gras’ mecca in New Orleans.

“We don’t allow alcohol and smoking,” she said, something just about as opposite from the drink-and-cigarette-laden vision of a New Orleans Mardi Gras as one can get.

That’s just fine with Stevens, who married her husband, Jerry, six years ago.

A Roman Catholic, Jerry celebrates Mardi Gras as a period of feasting and fun before the Lenten season, a period of self-sacrifice and reflection that culminates in Easter.

Technically, Mardi Gras, also known as “Fat Tuesday,” a literal translation of the name, is the last day of feasting before Lent begins Ash Wednesday.

The Stevenses got the idea for their “cowboy Mardi Gras” from a Saturday night Mardi Gras celebration at Holy Family Catholic Church.

Even without the wild debauchery sometimes associated with such celebrations, Stevens was expecting a good time.

“I think everyone’s going to really enjoy it,” she said, noting the once-monthly barn dances usually attract anywhere from 100 to as many as 160 square dancers.

The “good-time” aura of Mardi Gras that has started in some respects to divorce the season from its religious upbringing and turn it into more of a general theme of fun and frolic.

Mardi Gras-themed items are big sellers at Card & Party Factory, said manager Gail Kowalski, who said those same items are for sale throughout the year.

“A lot of different organizations, schools and home parties” make use of the traditional trappings of the celebration, she said, and Kowalski keeps Mardi Gras beads, hats, party goods, bracelets, masks and “just about anything else” in stock throughout the year.

The popularity of the celebration as a theme is easy to understand, she said.

“It’s colorful,” she said. “It relates to having a good time, letting your guard down a bit.”

For most of her customers, she said, it’s not something related to spirituality.

“I’ve never really heard anyone relate it to Lent, to be honest,” she said.

Bird Thomas, curator of “fun learning experiences” at The Center for Contemporary Arts, noted the downtown art gallery celebrated Mardi Gras a touch early — Feb. 4 — and is planning to do it again next year.

“We are totally about the pagan part of Mardi Gras,” Thomas joked in an email Friday.

This year’s celebration was held in early February because “that date is part of the carnival celebration, and it didn’t conflict with other major fundraisers around town,” she said.

“Next year, we nabbed the date of the Saturday before Fat Tuesday, because that is the primo pre-celebration date,” she said, adding that the center plans to recreate a New Orleans “krewe” ball, referring to private social clubs that sponsor balls, parades, etc., as part of Mardi Gras festivities.

Catholics and others who celebrate Lent often fast or give up certain foods or treats during the season, and Catholics in particular have a tradition of eating fish on Fridays during the season.

Such sacrifice is, again, opposite to the potential excesses of a traditional Mardi Gras, though that doesn’t mean opportunists like Texas chain Whataburger, advertising the fast-food franchise’s Whatacatch fish sandwich as something so customizable that diners “can have the sandwich a different way every Friday during Lent,” don’t try to put a slightly richer spin on the period of fasting.

Taco Bueno, a chain with Abilene origins, also is pushing fish tacos and a vegetarian black bean burrito as Lenten choices.

Father Philip LeMasters, a priest in the Orthodox Church, said his church doesn’t have a tradition of Mardi Gras, though much like the Catholic Church, ts Lenten season — which is calculated differently than in Western churches — leads into a period of prayer, fasting, almsgiving, confession of sins and reconciliation with neighbors.

Lent for the Orthodox church begins on a Monday, LeMasters said. This year, it’s Feb. 27.

“The fasting guidelines call for not having meat, dairy products, fish with a backbone, wine and olive oil on weekdays, with the fast being lightened to allow for the consumption of olive oil and wine on Saturdays and Sunday,” he said.

Fasting is a way of humbling oneself before God and learning to say no to self-centered desires, LeMasters said.

“Those who are unable for physical or other reasons to fast from food are encouraged to fast from something else to which they have developed an unhealthy attachment, which could range from watching TV to playing golf or … reading the newspaper,” he said, with a sense of humor.

http://www.reporternews.com/news/2012/feb/17/celebration-of-mardi-gras-in-west-texas-not-as/