Mardi Gras, Fasching, Carnivale, or whatever you call it is not a big festival in the USA. In most cities, a few local bars or nightclubs may feature a Mardi Gras party but wide-spread celebration is not common.
That is not true of New Orleans, Louisiana or in the neighboring Gulf Coast city of Mobile Alabama. In those places, Mardi Gras is the big event of the year. They begin celebrating several weeks before "fat Tuesday" by holding nightly parades and culminate the festival with a weekend of revelry. Social clubs from various neighborhoods throughout the cities have prepared months in advance. Their volunteer members constructed elaborate floats and fantastic costumes, they practiced musical numbers and dance routines, and they purchase hordes of plastic necklaces, candy and party favors.
On individually designated nights, each social group hosts its parade and competes for the right to say that theirs was the best in the city. Elaborately decorated floats parade down the streets followed by marching bands and spectacularly costumed performers. From the tops of each float, costumed helpers toss handfuls of plastic necklaces, candies, confections, and party favors into the crowds. Along the sidewalks, thousands of spectators clutch for the free gifts and vie to see how many plastic Mardi Gras necklaces they can wear around their necks.
Why is Mardi Gras such a madness in and around New Orleans and no where else in the USA?
Perhaps, it is due to the fact that New Orleans is one of the most European influenced cities in the USA. This Gulf Coast port was once a colony of Spain and also a possession of France before it joined the United States. It bears the imprint of its Creole background and its Cajun immigrants.
About three hundred years ago, New Orleans was a wild seaport of the New World, a refuge for pirates, a Mississippi River gateway into the inerior of a largely unexplored new continent. It became a magnet for the unlanded gentry of old Europe who came to seek their fortune in the new lands. Many of these disposessed gentry settled in New Orleans and formed its Creole community with their European culture, European architecture and European cuisine.
About 250 years ago, England drove many of the French colonists out of Canada through persecution and intimidation. Many thousands of French Canadians from the Arcadian Peninsula migrated south and sought refuge in New Orleans. These Arcadians, who eventually became known as Cajuns, brought their own dialect of the French language along with their French Canadian culture and their unique cuisine.
Today, the Creole influence and the Cajun influence are still very apparant in New Orleans. They are visible in its architecture, in its language and especially in its cuisine. Combined, they produce a wondeful European, New World culture that is unique in the USA and perhaps in the entire world. Maybe, that is the reason that Mardi Gras is so popular in this American city.