Carnivals

Carnivals are mainly open-air popular festivities organized by secular or religious authorities. Most occur in early spring in the pre-Lent period though in origination they were associated with Twelfth Night and the solstice and the Northern turn of the Sun and its light increase. The rites of carnival include masks and costume (particularly personifying death, the forces of nature and the various stages of life); music and processional dance; and fire-throwing, water sprinkling or ducking, leaping through the air and mud daubing or charcoal blackening, to represent the sway of the four elements. Another feature of carnival is noise-making to expel the demons and the wintry weather. The Carnival of Rio, and the Mardi Gras of New Orleans are exuberant Latin versions. The Germanic Fasching carnivals such as were celebrated in Nurenberg's Fastnacht and Fastnachtsspiele are more disciplined and are enacted still in various forms in Austria and Switzerland as well as in Germany. While carnivals are significant for tourism they also attract excessive licentiousness and certain criminal elements ranging from pickpockets and petty thieves to pimps and prostitutes, gamblers, blackmailers and extortionists. In Nazi Germany and in some communist countries carnivals have been coopted for political purposes, e.g. Russia's communist youth carnivals. In the mainly Protestant USA which does not observe the Lent season, carnival is the term also given to travelling commercial amusement fairs which provide merry-go-rounds, Ferris wheels, side shows and games of chance. Such commercial carnivals, because of their movement, may escape enforcement of regulations concerning, safety, health, and minimum pay.