Travel Information - Adventure Guide to Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao - page 27

Winter is high season throughout the Caribbean, and tourists are treated
to a heavy schedule of activities. Locals begin the new year with elaborate
parties: Bonaire holds a costume parade known as Maskarada ; Arubans
are serenaded by groups of roaming troubadours known as Dande ; and
Curaçao throws a Tumba Festival . Then the islands move directly into
pre-Carnival preparations and festivities. Carnival itself takes place dur-
ing the week before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday.
Carnival
Carnival is the biggest celebration of the year throughout the Caribbean.
On most islands, including the ABCs, residents dress in colorful costumes
and take to the streets to enjoy a mixture of music, parades, dancing, and
competitions.
Carnival History & Traditions
The festival was originally a pagan ritual
meant to flatter the gods of nature into grant-
ing favorable weather for producing a bounti-
ful harvest. Pre-Christian Romans saw late
winter as a time of self-purification, and a
chance to chase away the adverse spirits of cold
and dark in order to ready themselves for a
fresh beginning in the spring. During this time
of preparation, the Romans would eat and
drink with abandon, and make offerings to
their dead relatives as well as to the gods.
Pre-Mosaic Jews celebrated a similar spring
festival that was later merged with the restric-
tive activities and fasting of Passover, a com-
memoration of Jewish liberation from
Egyptian rule. When the early Christian church was unable to stop these
annual festivities, the priests adapted them to suit the church's new
traditions.
Easter, which is calculated from Passover on the Jewish calendar, came to
fall 40 days from Ash Wednesday (the beginning of Lent), which was
tacked onto the end of the existing three-day pagan feast beginning in
1091 AD. Gradually, everyone forgot the original intention of the spring
celebrations, and the days preceding the Lenten-repentance period
became simply a time to go a little wild. With this history of Carnival in
mind, it is easy to explain some modern traditions.
Did You Know? The word itself is found in litera-
ture dating from the 13th century, but the term
“carne vale” was used as early as 965 AD to mean
“farewell to meat.” Earlier writings use the term
carne vale in reference to taxes charged peasants
during their spring festival.