Many of us will visit carnivals and participate in the festivities that ensue, but how many of us know about carnival culture and origin of carnival?
The roots of carnival culture can be found in Roman Catholicism. The Romans would hold carnivals prior to Lent in order to use up the food that would go unused during the Lenten period. In some countries, such as Cyprus, the carnival culture still revolves very heavily around this premise.
The earliest example of such an event is that of the Italian Carnival of Venice. This particular carnival has its roots in the Roman festivals of Saturnalia and Bacchanalia. Saturnalia, which took place on the seventeenth day of December each year, was a festival dedicated to the Roman god Saturn, god of agriculture and strength. Bacchanalia, held on the sixteenth and seventeenth days of March, was held in the grove of Simila, near Aventine Hill, and was held to commemorate and honour Bacchus, the Roman god of wine.
Carnival
From Italy, carnival celebration spread quickly throughout Catholic Europe; first into Spain, Portugal and France before its influence reached the German Rhineland and traveled overseas to Latin America with the mass migration of Spanish and Portuguese in the fifteenth century. From here, carnival culture spread into the Caribbean regions. Interestingly, the United Kingdom’s popular carnival culture has
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