February 13th (which happens to be Valentine’s Day Eve this year) is Fat Tuesday, or Mardi Gras. But what exactly is this?

Mardi Gras is an originally French holiday that marks the close of the pre-Lenten season and serves as a way to indicate the beginning of Lent, in which many Christian groups fast in preparation for Easter. On this day, it was tradition to use all the fats in your house (hence, “Fat Tuesday”), so that you could successfully fast once Lent began. In the United States, the largest and most well-known celebration for Mardi Gras occurs in New Orleans, where it is a legal holiday filled with parades, festive floats, costumes of people dressed in purple, green, and gold, and tons of great, fatty food. But there’s no need to travel all the way down to Louisiana to celebrate the holiday; there are plenty of ways to celebrate right in our little community.

A popular Fat Tuesday treat in our area is a paczki, which is a polish pastry. They are donuts filled with jelly and topped with powdered sugar. You can get these at a lot of places, such as Macri’s, Martin’s, or Rise N Roll, to name a few. South Bend also has a lot of festive events going on that you can attend to celebrate. The Chicory Cafe will be having live music from 7-9pm on February 13th, an array of New Orleans favorites (such as beignets, gumbo, and jumbalaya), tarot card readers, and plenty of decorations and beads.  Jay’s Lounge will be having live music and a themed Mardi Gras celebration on February 10th from 6-9pm. Even if you don’t make it out to a restaurant to celebrate, you can always party it up at home, by looking up classic Mardi Gras recipes and giving those a go.

All in all, I hope you now have a better understanding of Mardi Gras as a whole, and are inspired to find some way to celebrate the holiday this year. Cheers!