This year our company “Rightapplications” became responsible for the route of the Mardi Gras parades. Every year the city of New Orleans hosts a huge celebration, Mardi Gras parades. The tradition to celebrate Mardi Gras in the USA goes back to early French colonists. New Orlean is recognized as the capital of pedestrian and horse parades, where this whole thing happened for the first time in 1857. But the holiday itself is celebrated by Catholics since 1699. So, on February 20, the New Orlean streets are experiencing the first day of the Catholic festival “Mardi Gras” (“Fat Tuesday”). The true sense of the holiday is to embrace spring and to say farewell to winter. “Fat Tuesday” is the last day before Easter Lent. This day is also the carnival culmination. The carnival has only one, but very important condition — it is necessary that the carnival lasted one day and ended exactly at midnight. If celebration continues even one minute more after the clock strikes twelve and Ash Wednesday comes then the souls of idlers will fall into devil’s clutches.
Or … as far as the legend goes, a Russian knyaz who fell in love with an American actress Lidia Thompson, followed her to the US before the very holiday. And so, for such royalty, the carnival organizers created a special platform with “Rex” (King) sign on it. Thus, from that year on every carnival is leaded by the masked and costumed King and Queen, who throw different knick-knacks to the excited crowd.
The marvelous event this year is on Tuesday, February 13, the day before Valentine’s Day. Traditionally the carnival begins the 12th night after Christmas, and two weeks before Mardi Gras, the parading event starts! This costumed, brightly beaded and feathered phenomenon is all about having a great time!
This year parades used an app “WDSU Parade Tracker” developed by RA that helped people stick to the schedule, which by the way changed all the time, and follow the real-time location of the front of every parade, follow the event on the map and find out some cool news on the parades.
