The carnival is a celebration that takes place immediately before the Christian Lent (which begins with Ash Wednesday), and has a variable date (between February and March depending on the year). Traditionally, it starts on a Thursday (Thursday, Thursday) and ends on the following Tuesday (Tuesday of Carnival). The carnival combines elements such as costumes, groups that sing couplets, parades and street parties. Despite the differences that its celebration presents in the world, its common characteristic is that of being a period of permissiveness and a certain lack of control. In its beginnings, probably with a certain sense of modesty characteristic of religion, the Carnival was a parade in which the participants wore costumes and wore masks. However, the custom was transforming the celebration to its current form.
The origin of its celebration seems likely to be in the pagan festivals, such as those held in honor of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, Saturnalia and Roman Lupercaux, or those held in honor of the Apis bull in Egypt. According to some historians, the origins of this festivity would go back to ancient Sumeria and Egypt, more than 5000 years ago, with very similar celebrations at the time of the Roman Empire, from where the custom spread throughout Europe, being taken to America by the Spanish and Portuguese navigators starting at the end of the 15th century.
The carnival, although the Church does not admit it as a celebration of religious tone, is associated with the countries of Catholic tradition, and to a lesser extent with Eastern Orthodox Christians; Protestant cultures have modified traditions, such as the Danish carnival.
Ethnologists find in the carnival surviving elements of ancient festivals and cultures, such as the winter festival (Saturnalia), the Greek and Roman Dionysian celebrations (Bacchanalia), the pre-Hispanic Andean festivals and the African-American cultures.
By extension, some similar parties are called carnival at any time of the year.
At the beginning of the Middle Ages the Catholic Church proposed an etymology of carnival: from the vulgar Latin carnem-levare, which means 'to abandon the flesh' (which was precisely the obligatory prescription for all the people during every Friday of Lent).
Subsequently, another etymology emerged that is currently handled in the popular sphere: the Latin word carne-vale, which means 'goodbye to meat'.
But in the late twentieth century several authors began to suspect the pagan origin of the name. Carna is the Celtic goddess of beans and bacon. It would also be connected with Indo-European parties, dedicated to the god Karna (who appears in the Mahabhárata as a human being, elder brother of the Pandavas, son of the sun god and queen Kuntí) or with the Hindu deity Kāmadeva who is the god of love , his name kāma means 'sexual desire' (according to some Hindu monks: 'lust', more pejorative) and deva: 'god'. According to Śiva Purāna (a genre of Indian written literature different from the older Vedas oral literature), Kāmadeva is the son (or rather the creation) of the god Brahmā (creator of the universe), the well-known book Kāma Sūtra (' Kāma 'aphorisms or' maxims about love ') of Vatsiaiana, is inspired by this Hindu god; maybe brought to Europe by gypsy peoples since the origin of these comes from India.
Currently, the carnival has become a popular party of a playful nature. The term "Carnival" also applies to other types of festivities that are not located at the time of the carnival (time prior to Lent), but share similar elements, such as the parades of the floats.
