Carnival is coming

Celia Cruz used to say that "life is a carnival and it is more beautiful to live singing". Carnival is approaching in my country, with everything that is happening around the world as the pandemic, I think it is crazy to celebrate carnival, as it is a massive event where people do not always have control, anything can happen, I just hope nothing negative happens.

Thursday, February 24th

What is Carnival?

Carnival is a popular celebration in Venezuela that takes place every year, between the end of February and the beginning of March. In this festivity there are parades, comparsas, music, people dress up in costumes, food, and it is a really massive event.

Carnival occurs 40 days before the Christian Lent, this makes the date is not exact, but the celebration is always on a Monday and Tuesday, these days are not working days. But as Venezuelans, we have been known for being very festive, so we usually start Carnival on a Friday, that is, we have Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday of celebration. This year the carnival is on Monday, February 28th and Tuesday, March 1st.

This party is always full of joy, costumes, lots of colors and parades. In the schools they also celebrate carnival, the children go in costume to their school and have a party, but they also elect a carnival king or queen, this year it was my niece's turn and she won the coronation, she was really happy to be the carnival queen. My mother in law made her dress and cape, as she is a seamstress.

I continue with the carnival, not only children enjoy the carnival, also young people and adults, since it is a party where we can dress up in the most fun and dance. I remember that the carnivals I used to go to before were in Araya, Sucre. There the carnival was really fun, as Araya is a small town you could enjoy the whole comparsa passing by your house and then you would meet with everyone on the beach, where they would continue doing different activities, such as the coronation, dances, costume exhibitions, parades and lots and lots of music.

Speaking of Carnival... As you know, I am a musician and my couple is also a musician and the most normal thing is to participate in different musical activities in our country, but we do not do it, because many times there are many irresponsible musicians and when it comes to disorder, we do not like to participate, because this is a pretty messy celebration haha.

Although my couple doesn't like to participate in these events, his brother does. A few days ago my brother in law called Luis because the guitarist of the calypso group said he would not play for carnivals, so now my couple is going to play the guitar, he is not very happy, but he likes to support his brother.

One of the problems of many musicians is that they leave everything to the last day, today is Thursday and most of the people in the group don't know the songs, the only ones who have studied have been my couple, his brother and another friend, oh no, it will be crazy and really it is always like that, that's why we don't participate in these events...

Regarding the payment, it's not very good, but my couple is not doing it for the money, but to help his brother. Maybe now you are wondering "what is calypso?" I'll leave that for the next article, in this one I'll continue talking about carnival, the good and the bad.

History

The exact date of when Carnival began to be celebrated is not known, but there are some places that assure that Carnival as we know it today began more than 5,000 years ago, it is said that it was from the Roman Empire, since it is related to a festivity that has to do with the God Saturn, others say that it began in Greece, since their festivities venerated Dionysus. Despite not having an exact date of when it began, we all know that it was a religious ritual.

And as a ritual, there were excesses of food, drink, lots of dancing and singing. I read on the web, that the Catholic Church was the one who proposed the term Carnival in the Middle Ages, this was done to refer to the abandonment of meat, since in the Lenten season red meat is not eaten. Despite the change of name, the tradition continued to be synonymous with joy and celebration.

Some historians believe that the origin of the word Carnival is actually Italian and that the Catholic religion appropriated the term to replace its libertine meaning. What do you think about this?

In short, carnival is a tradition in my country, where we enjoy the comparsas, parades, dances, coronations, food, drinks, music. Ahhh and something also very important, we play carnival, yes, just as you read it, we play carnival.

Normally the ones who play this are the children, so I had completely forgotten this part of the tradition, I remembered it thanks to my niece. On carnival days, children usually fill small balloons with water and then throw them to other children to get them wet. I had completely forgotten this, now I am an adult hahaha

Since my niece doesn't have many friends in the new place where she lives, she has decided to play carnival with us, but she didn't know how to tie the balloons, so my couple and I helped her. All of us in the house played carnival that day, my in-laws, my brothers-in-law, my couple and I, it was really fun. The kids are really great, their joy is contagious and they make us feel like kids again.

PS: I was also a Carnival queen, here are the proofs haha

Thank you friend, for having reached the end of my article, I hope you liked it and learned about some of the festivities of my country.

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All content is original

All images were downloaded from the web

The links from where I got the information are shown below

https://www.intermundial.es/blog/donde-se-creo-el-carnaval/

https://www.calendarr.com/ecuador/carnaval/

https://eldiario.com/2022/02/01/carnaval-venezuela-dias-2022/#:~:text=Desde%20hace%20d%C3%A9cadas%2C%20el%20Carnaval,orquestas%20en%20los%20recorridos%20caraque%C3%B1os.

Greetings from Venezuela