Mardi Gras: How New Orleans Throws the Biggest Party on Earth

The Biggest Free Party on Earth

Mardi Gras is not a day. It's a season. Carnival begins on Twelfth Night — January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany — and builds for weeks through a rolling calendar of balls, parades, and parties until it crashes into Fat Tuesday, the final blowout before Lent. In New Orleans, this isn't a quaint tradition. It's the organizing principle of the entire city. Schools close. Businesses shut down. The whole metropolis gives itself over to the most elaborate public celebration in the Western Hemisphere.

The roots go back to French colonial New Orleans, where Catholic traditions of feasting before the fasting season of Lent took hold in the early 1700s. The first recorded Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans was in 1837, and by the time the Mistick Krewe of Comus organized its first torchlit procession in 1857, the tradition was cemented. Today, more than seventy krewes — the private organizations that fund and stage the parades — roll through the streets of New Orleans during Carnival season.

The Krewes

Every parade belongs to a krewe, and every krewe has its own personality. Rex, the King of Carnival, has been parading since 1872 and sets the official colors of Mardi Gras — purple for justice, gold for power, green for faith. Zulu, founded in 1909 by a group of Black laborers, throws hand-painted coconuts and remains one of the most beloved krewes in the city. Endymion, Bacchus, and Orpheus are the super-krewes — massive parades with celebrity monarchs, enormous floats, and tens of thousands of riders.

Then there's Krewe du Vieux, the first parade of the season, which rolls through the Marigny and French Quarter with satirical floats that skewer local and national politics with a gleeful vulgarity that would make a sailor blush. It's the anti-parade parade, and locals love it.

Throws, Beads, and Doubloons

The currency of Mardi Gras is throws — the trinkets that float riders toss to the crowds lining the parade routes. Beads are the most famous, but the tradition goes far beyond that. Doubloons — aluminum coins stamped with the krewe's emblem — have been a tradition since Rex introduced them in 1960. Zulu coconuts are the most prized throw in all of Carnival. Muses, an all-female krewe, throws hand-decorated shoes that people display in their homes like fine art.

The act of catching throws is its own art form. Seasoned parade-goers bring ladders for their kids, stake out prime neutral ground positions hours in advance, and develop elaborate strategies for making eye contact with riders. The universal cry — "Throw me somethin', mister!" — is as New Orleans as jazz and gumbo.

Mardi Gras Indians

Away from the big parades, in neighborhoods like the Seventh Ward and Central City, the Mardi Gras Indians suit up. These African American masking traditions date back over a century, honoring the bond between enslaved Africans and the Native Americans who sheltered them. Tribes like the Wild Magnolias, the Golden Eagles, and the Northside Skull and Bone Gang spend the entire year hand-sewing elaborate suits covered in beads, feathers, and rhinestones — suits that can weigh over a hundred pounds and cost thousands of dollars.

On Mardi Gras morning, the tribes take to the streets in their neighborhoods, chanting, dancing, and engaging in stylized confrontations with rival tribes. It's the most beautiful and most authentically New Orleans thing about Carnival — no corporate sponsors, no tourism boards, just a community tradition that has survived everything the city has thrown at it.

Fat Tuesday

Mardi Gras day itself is pure sensory overload. Rex rolls down St. Charles Avenue in the morning. Zulu rolls even earlier. The Mardi Gras Indians emerge in their neighborhoods. The French Quarter becomes a wall-to-wall street party. Families line the uptown parade routes with barbecue grills and folding chairs. Bourbon Street does what Bourbon Street always does, only more so.

And then, at midnight, it stops. Police on horseback sweep Bourbon Street. The sanitation crews move in. Lent begins. The city that just threw the biggest party on the planet goes quiet, at least until the next king cake shows up.