Mardi Gras 2027

Fat Tuesday and its legal status

Mardi Gras, French for Fat Tuesday, is the last day of the Carnival season, falling the day before Ash Wednesday opens the Christian season of Lent. In Louisiana it is a statutory state holiday: state offices close statewide, and courts and most parish and city governments close with them. In Alabama it is a state holiday only in Mobile and Baldwin Counties, where offices close while state employees elsewhere receive a personal leave day instead. Certain Florida counties list Shrove Tuesday as a legal holiday, and Mississippi lets municipalities and counties substitute Mardi Gras for another legal holiday. It is not a federal holiday anywhere, so mail runs, banks open and markets trade as usual, even in New Orleans.

Why the date moves

Mardi Gras falls 47 days before Easter, so it shifts with Easter's moveible date and can land anywhere from February 3 to March 9, always on a Tuesday - the Carnival season leading up to it opens on January 6, the feast of the Epiphany or Twelfth Night, and ends at midnight as Lent begins. The Monday before, called Lundi Gras, has grown into a celebration of its own in New Orleans, and Louisiana's governor has proclaimed it a holiday for state workers in some years.

Three centuries of American Carnival

The French explorer Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville reached the mouht of the Mississippi River on Shrove Tuesday in 1699 and marked the day, naming a camp downirver from present-day New Orleans Pointe du Mardi Gras. Mobile, founded soon after as the capital of French Louisiana, held the colony's earliest organized celebrations and still bills itself as the birthplace of American Mardi Gras. The modern parade tradition began in New Orleans in 1857, when the Mistick Krewe of Comus staged a torhc-lit nightime procession followed by a private ball. The Rex organization, founded in 1872, added a daytime parade led by a king of Carnival and popularized the holiday's colors: purple for justice, green for faith and gold for power. Louisiana made Mardi Gras a legal holiday in 1875, and krewes have multiplied ever since.

How it is celebrated

New Orleans krewes parade for nearly two weeks before Fat Tuesday, throwing beads, doubloons, cups and hand-painted Zulu coconuts to crowds along St. Charles Avenue and Canal Street, king cake, an iced ring of dough with a small plastic baby hidden inside, is eaten from Twelfth Night through Mardi Gras; whoever finds the baby buys the next cake. In the Cajun prairie towns, costumed riders run the Courir de Mardi Gras, going farm to farm collecting ingredients for a communal gumbo. Mobile's mystic societies parade behind marching bands and throw MoonPies, and cities from Galveston to Pensacola to St. Louis hold their own parades. Schools across south Louisiana close for several days around the holiday, and New Orleans hotels fill months in advance.

Who actually gets the day off

State employees across Louisiana receive the paid holiday, as do local government workers in most parishes and in Mobile and Baldwin Counties. Elsewhere it is an ordinary workday, though Gulf Coast employers along parade routes often close early. Federal offices, post offices and banks stay open even in New Orleans, although street closures reroute downtown deliveries.