Carnivale!
Dust off your party masks and brush up on your salsa moves–Carnival is around the corner. Taking place this year from Friday, February 25 to Tuesday, March 7 (better known in the English-speaking world as Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras), Carnival is the week or so of unrestrained merriment that precedes the holy month of Lent in the Catholic calendar. It’s name is derived from the Latin for “Farewell to the Flesh”–a bit of a misnomer considering how much flesh is bared at most Carnival festivities. It’s been around in the Old World longer than in the New, so Carnival in the former (mainly in Venice, Italy, and C?diz, Spain) tends to be more restrained and full of tradition than the free-wheeling debauchery of such New World hotspots as Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and New Orleans, USA. But really, Carnaval, Carnevale, Carnival…no matter how you spell it or where you celebrate it, the word almost always guarantees lots of dancing, lots of drinking, and (in most cases) lots of nudity.
