WZN´s does Lent, Mardi Gras & Carnival

Hello, hello, hello! It has been a while but this is Michael, your friendly neighborhood Warp Zone Nerd (name that reference!)...in Spain. This past week I celebrated a fantastic fiesta/holiday/excuse to wear a costume, party and not remember what happend the next day/whatever called Carnival. Carnival is a widely (outside of America) popular and celebrated day/...whatever. During it people wear costumes, go on pardes, dance, sing, party, etc. The best part, here in Spain at least, is that we get days off for it! It would be as if work and schools gave you Monday and Tuesday off for Halloween (mas o menos [look it up]). Now, as promised to our seemingly current #1 twitter fan @CaligulaVersus, I will write a blog about it (I know it has been a while, thank Calig for this one and then follow her on twitter.

Now, everyone in Spain, whether or not they celebrate it (and there are some areas that don´t celebrate it at all), seems to appreciate Carnival because of the days off it provides. However, when I asked my students why this festivity exists the best, and only, answers I got were ´´because it´s fun´´ and ´´tradition.´´ Okay, it is a tradition, but why, ¿why is it a tradition (Sorry all, I´m on a Spanish keybºard again and I çan´t h·e·l·p¬hªving €xtrá sígñs¡)?

Well, to get a clue we should look at the meaning behind Carnival and Mardi Gras, that´s right Mardi Gras. Based off of what I read, they had similar beginnings (if you want specific histories on the holidays and how they are celebrated [especially for Mardi Gras in New Orleans] I highly recommend looking them up. It is very interesting). One translation for Carnival comes from the latin worlds Carne Val, meaning Farewell to Meat. Mardi Gras, is actually French for Fat Tuesday. Any ideas as to why it is called this yet? Anyone? Anyone? Beuller? Beuller? (¡Name that reference! [come on, this is an easy one]).

Well, the holiday that comes after these two celebrated celebrations is none other than Lent (or for our Spanish viewers, cuaresma). This holiday lasts 40 days. It used to be that for those 40 days carnivorous activities were not allowed, a.k.a. no meat. During Lent people began to realize that they were very bad at planning out anything or having forethought. They ended up with a great deal of meat left over that would go bad and needed to be thown out. So let´s go over the possible solutions to this problem.
1) Buy a planner or Outlook (we should get endorsements) and schedule out when to eat what.
B) Donate any extra food you have to those who are not well off and could use the food.
C) Throw a huge party where we over indulge in food, drink and other activities.
4) B & C
E) All of the above.

Well, humanity went with option (3), ´´party like there´s no tomorrow.´´ (As a side note I always thought that phrase should be ´´party like there won´t be a today.´´ My reasoning for this is that if you party enough, when you wake up the next day, you won´t remember the day before [and you may not want to remember it].) They started having huge celebrations where they would eat meat and other items that they would not be able to have during the next 40 days. Eventually this tradition spread and continued. It then evolved and became the holidays appropriately known as Farewell to Meat (Carnival) and Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras).

Now that the history lesson is over let me tell you a little about my Carnival. While we get the days off for it, Carnival is not celebrated in my town, Plasencia. In fact, I found it surprising that it seemed more people dressed up for Halloween, which is not even celebrated in Spain, than Carnival. So, I road tripped (8 hours on two buses) over to Cádiz. Carnival in Cádiz is so popular it has its own Wikipedia page (oh yeah, I went there [look it up]). Here everyone seemed to be in some sort of costume. There were costumes from Minney Mouse to Alien (from Aliens) to cross dressers, and they all were having a blast. There was a parade and many of singers. In Cádiz they have contests where people make there own songs (usually political) and sing them. Some costumes can be about current events as well. For example (refer to Wiki), apparently during the bird flu there were many bird costumes. This year there were octopus costumes to remember the sadly deseased Paul the Octopus who predicted most of the winners for the World Cup (Go Spain, we won!). One of my favorite moments was when my new Malaysian friends and I were looking for the beach and we randomly passed on the street three guys dressed up as girls singing and dancing to choreographed show tunes translated to Spanish and trying to prove to everyone that they were better than The Temptations (and they were d@mñ good).

I had gone back to Seville afterwords and spent another two days there, which I may write about another day. That being said I will briefly talk about my hostal experience in Seville. If you every get a chance to stay at an Oasis Backpackers´ Paradise (Paradise or Inn or something else, the last word varies), I highly recommend it. It is an incredible place. The people who work their are volunteers who get room and board (so they want to be there). They have great service, a great bar/restaurant, fantastically cheep and delicious food, as well as a free/donation based walking tour (ask for Becky in Seville). In 24 hours I became friends with people from Spain, Malaysia, France, America, Germany, Australia, Austria and England. It was an incredible experience and I highly recommend it.

Alright all. That is it from me for today. I hope you have learned something and have enjoyed this. Next time you are partying for Mardi Gras or Carnival remember the history of the day, and remember me. I´ll see you next time.

nerd on,
Michael

PS You get WZN Points for replying to the post as well as naming the references

PPS Bonus references. Where is ´´festivous for the rest of us´´ from?

PPPS Please follow our blog, our twitter.com/WarpZoneNerds and subscribe and/or download our show for free from iTunes or from this blog (use the search bar).

A retrospective post Halloween

Hey all, Michael here again from Spain (nope, you can´t get rid of me 8P ). I am here to talk to you about Halloween. Now, Halloween has come to pass. I love Halloween, and what´s not to love? You are able to dress up into costumes and disguises that you wouldn´t normally be caught dead in. You get to watch scary movies (I include Rocky Horror Picture Show in the scary movie category) and it is publically accepted to knock on people´s doors and threaten them into giving you candy (or what I like to call, protection money) or else! Halloween is glorious. However, it is not an Españoles (Spanish) holiday...and yet. Every year more and more people celebrate this crazy annual tradition. People can be seen here in the discoes (clubs) dressed up as Captain Jack Sparrow, if your lucky you´ll see a zombie walking around and also, everynow and then, you´ll see a mime. This year, I´ve been told, was one of the first years that some of the television channels stopped their normal viewing schedule to show only scary shows and movies (peliculas de miedo) for the week of Halloween. I was curious, ¿why? ¿Why in the world would Halloween, of all holidays become so popular here?

In America we have Thanksgiving, which has evolved into a day to be with family and give thanks to everything that we have: family, food, life, and everything the word etcetera has to offer. We have Independence day. A day where we shoot off fireworks and have fun to remember when America declared it´s independence and it truely started to be America. Surely Spain has a day where they commemorate their country such as this (I´ve been told yes by some and no by others, so if they do have it, it does not seem to be as big a deal as ours). So why? Why Halloween? I asked someone this and all they had to say was, ``No sé. ¿Porque tú celebras Halloween?´´ Why do I, no, why do we celebrate Halloween?...I had no clue! So, I went into research mode.

I started the research determined to find the cause for Halloween and what I found surprised me...NOBODY KNOWS FOR SURE WHY WE CELEBRATE IT! What am I to tell the students here in Spain when they look at me with there earnest eyes ready to learn and ask, ¨Why do we celebrate Halloween, a holiday that has become the second biggest commercial holiday (I´ll let you guess what´s the first) in America?´´ I´ll look at that student completely confused. Once the teacher in charge translates to me what that student said though I will then have no excuse not to answer! So, what am I to tell them?

``Well kids, Halloween, just like the American language, is a deformed combination of several other cultures. The date may have Celtic roots because the Celts celebrated New Years on the night of October 31st. You see this was when it usually got very cold for them and they associated the cold with dead people trying to come back to earth.
``Trick or treating maybe came from the English´s All Soul´s Day where families handed out snacks (a.k.a. bribes) to other people asking them to pray for various deceased family members. It may be that or another Celtic tradition where people put a bowl of food (BRIBES!) outside their doors in order to beg the dead and the ghosts not to enter their homes and do bad things to them.
``As to dressing up in costumes? Meh, we´re unsure about that too. It likely came from the Celts, as well as some other European peoples, who were still terrified that the dead came back at this time. Due to this, they would wear masks in order to trick the ghosts and monsters into thinking that they were a ghost and monster too. This way the monster, or ghost, would not be stab them in the back (and sorry Marshall Grey and Lauren Reynolds of Late Night Spookline, but this is the explaination for a great deal of monster and ghost sitings during this time. It was actually people dressed up as monsters who were terrified by other people dressed up as monsters who were terrified as well...wow, say that run on sentence ten times fast.).
``Then, when people started realizing how awesome America was, they came over and continued their traditions there.´´

The students will look at me with a blank stare and when the teacher translates what I said to them the same student raises his or her hand, ``So, Halloween wasn´t normally a fun holiday but one about blackmail? It was a tradition to fear and not to celebrate? A day where everyone felt their life could end at any moment due to an unseen horror?´´
Me, ``......Yes.´´
The student, ``So how did America make it so fun.´´
``Well,´´ I reply, ``Well, you see Americans are notorious jerks. I can only guess that while all the new people were dressing up in costumes and terrified for their lives, Americans, I suppose, just made fun of them. Then some corporate brain for...I don´t know, a Wal Mart must have said, `You know what? We can make money off of this.´ And then a superstitious and extremely feared holiday became the marketing scheme it is today.´´

...Can I really have that conversation with a student? Do I really want to. Knowing how the holiday came to be actually makes me want to celebrate it less. However interesting it is that it exemplifies how America is a melting pot...it also shows that what the melting pot cooks can sometimes leave a sour taste in your mouth and make you wonder, ``If it smelt so funny, why eat it?´´ ...But then I remember my Mom helping me in my first costumes. I was a ghost one year and then the Blue Power Ranger the next (even when I was little I knew I was a nerd...and if you do not know who Billy Blue is then you did not watch Power Rangers. No, the 50 spin offs do not count!). I remember how much fun we had. I remember shopping for costumes and candy with my family and going from door to door to get more with my parents and sister. I remember going to my first dance dressed as Dracula. I remember going through my very first haunted house (casa de miedo), being scared half to death and then going back into the line to go through it again. I remember neighbors and friends that I have lost touch with dressing up in costumes ranging from Frankenstein to Buzz Lightyear. I remember being blown away by my first massive group showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and learning how do to the Time Warp with my friends, who are now spread out in different states. Then, in college, I remember making close friends through creating our own haunted house for four years and scaring other people half to death with it (seriously guys, you do not run backwards in a haunted house, that is just stupid).

Now I am in Spain. A place where Halloween is not traditionally celebrated...and yet, I will not be able to forget having a Halloween party and watching scary movies with my new American, Scottish and Españoles friends (we saw ``Rec,´´ a Spainish film which is officially my favorite scary movie). I will remember going to the disco and seeing zombies along the way who were badly singing the music (not the lyrics) to Michael Jackson´s thriller (``dun dun dun thriiiillerrr, thriller nocheees). I will remember classes being so curious about this Halloween holiday and yes, I will most likely remember writing this blog, which, when I started it, originally had nothing to do with what it turned out to be (I was going to do a cultural analysis on how different societies view zombies...maybe next year...or on the season finale of AMC´s newest show The Walking Dead, WHATCH IT!).

So...What do I tell the class? Do I want to tell them the real reason America celebrates Halloween and spoil the fun? Or do I tell them the reason we as a people celebrate Halloween. We do not celebrate it with the Celts in mind. We do not hand out or dress up because we think are lives depend on it. We do not think about how the holiday (if it can even be called that) started when we egg or teepee a person´s house. Heck, pretty much no one knows for sure how this annual celebration even started. So I tell them the truth, I tell them why we actually celebrate it.

``¡Because it is freakin´ egg smashing, sugar coma enducing, crazy, unadulterated fun!´´

===================================================

I used two souces to write this amazingly perfect article/essay on this confusing Spanish keyboard. The second being this link http://ezinearticles.com/?Why-Do-We-Celebrate-Halloween---The-Spookiest-Holiday-Of-The-Year&id=272487

The first and most important source is my supreme intellect....that is all.