What Mardi Gras Means to be from New Orleans
By David Waldron Anderson
Mardi Gras binds New Orleans and all of our surrounding parishes together like nothing else can. Everywhere in the world has celebrations, but Mardi Gras here is different. Though it’s known worldwide and people travel from every corner of the globe to experience it, Mardi Gras is real because it is, first and foremost, for the locals. and btw you are local if you have a mortgage here, you’ve lived here three plus years, or most importantly you choose to raise children here.
It is local people who pull money from their own pockets to join organizations, buy throws, build floats, and ride, one day or one night, simply to make strangers happy along a parade route. What most people don’t see is how much work goes into every parade. Every crew member, from the largest legacy krewes to the smallest neighborhood parades rolling down St. Charles Avenue or Veterans Highway, deserves respect for what they give to this city(meaning where we tell people we are from while traveling) lol.
And when you see the captains riding up front on white horses, give them a salute. They are the CEOs of these moving productions. It’s a massive responsibility, and nearly all of them do it without pay. They put on a show for the people of New Orleans free, joyful, and uniquely ours, so that families can come out together without worrying about ticket prices or who’s headlining. You just show up.
You go with your family, friends or you go alone, you end up making friends on the parade route. If you stand in the same spot year after year, those people become your friends for generations. You may never see them any other time of the year, but during Mardi Gras, they are family.
That’s the glue. No matter where you are in the world, if you meet someone else from New Orleans, there’s an immediate familiarity, a cousin ness. What binds that feeling is Mardi Gras. We all share it, from the most traditional parades to the newest, from the glamorous to the grassroots. They are all beautiful.
It’s our civic responsibility to go out, see the parades, meet our neighbors, and enjoy our city. It’s like a Saints game in that way, you’ll see people from every walk of life standing shoulder to shoulder, all there for the same reason: our culture (to pass a good time), see a great parade and enjoy each other.
Go see every parade you possibly can. You’ll come away feeling exactly what New Orleans has always had in abundance, LOVE!
