Mardi Gras before Christmas?

What if there was a Mardi Gras-type day of revelry and indulgence prior to Christmas? It may not be the Eve- heck, it might be as early as All Hallow's night. After all, Mardi Gras is a far time before Easter.
 
There is. It's just not the kind of thing that appealed to moderns, which is why the celebration of the waning year's bounty before the long fast weeks of the Advent has become a lot more genteel.

Of course, there really is no need to mark the beginning of Advent with a raucous celebration of excess because Advent, unlike Lent, *ends* with a raucous celebration of excess. It's called Christmas.
 
Also, one reason that Mardi Gras was so big was that you'd survived winter by that point, knew how much food was going to be available until the first spring food came in - and could eat up any surplus. In early winter, you don't KNOW just how much you're going to need.
 
In Medieval England, Christmas was celebrated as a day of revelry and indulgence. There would be a "Lord of Misrule" chosen to preside over the revels. It involved a great deal of drinking and overeating. In some areas I believe the merrymaking lasted through the whole "12 days of Christmas" from December 25 to January 6. In an Agricultural society there was really very little work that could be done on the farm in midwinter, so instead folks spent their time consuming the food (and drink!) they had stored up. I am not sure how much there were similar customs in the rest of Europe.

With the rise of Puritanism in England, this celebration became less popular. The Puritans actually sought to ban Christmas, and during the Commonwealth period they were successful.

KEVP
 
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