UNMASKED: A Carnival Cornucopia of European Revelry

"Pack up all my care and woe, here I go, singing low, Bye Bye Blackbird."

A detail of a huge carnival centerpiece, in Torres Vedras, Portugal, with a perennial carnival contender for King of Fools.

Carnival beckons, singing that tune about dumping the winter blues  "...and the hard luck stories they all hand me".

We crave clean slates, shucking memories of the slings and arrows that paralyze us.  New Year's resolutions, commitment-lite, disappear in the first head wind, but carnival has been serious about new beginnings since the millennia before Christ.

Since ancient times, new beginnings-that's Carnival. It now heralds Lent, 40 days of penance that lead to Easter. Most Americans know Carnival through New Orleans' Mardis Gras or perhaps Rio, but the roots are firmly in Europe, planted many centuries before Christianity. The Greeks partied in praise of Dionysus, and the Romans thanked Bacchus for wine and flora, with fertility heavy on their minds.  Bacchus was not just the god of wine, but of vegetation.  His cult connected to fertility.  Murdered by Titans, he was reborn.  His worship generated irrational exuberance, frenzied revels by women, and much early theater and standup comedy.  When condemned by Rome as a sinister source of vice and revolutionary unrest, the beliefs were periodically rejuvenated by slaves and poor free men. 

These traditions, celebrating man as a free being without hierarchy, blended easily with the various pagan rites of spring practiced by Germanic and other tribes.  The mix with local and aboriginal beliefs creates an amazing array of traditions.

The Church attempted to suppress the truly debauched revelry of the Middle Ages, but finally figured if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, and the Church layered on Christian beliefs, co-opting the locals.  Carnival became the last blast before the meatless Lenten fast. Carnivale, of course, is Latin for "Flesh, farewell."

The Carnival zone generally includes Catholic and Orthodox Europe, although there are notable exceptions. Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece are all in; Protestant Scandinavia and Britain are out. Belgium is in, the Netherlands out (except for Catholic Limburg). Northern, Lutheran Germany is out, but Bavaria and the Rhineland are very much in. And wherever Carnival is celebrated, it's celebrated the local way, and that can be as different as Muenster and provolone.

Though most carnivals will climax at midnight on Shrove (aka Fat) Tuesday-mid-February in 2010-schedules differ, so consult tourist boards and the Internet. Orthodox calendars, for example, can differ by as much as a month, although most Orthodox carnivals are more closely aligned this year.  Don't be late.

For years, I've shouldered the thankless task of chronicling carnivals across different cultures - sense of duty.