Alaaf and welcome to the secret history of carnival!

Let’s talk about carnival. No, not the Brazilian one, but the one in the south of the Netherlands. Last week, it was that time of the year again where people from all over the Netherlands rode down to the south and were dressed like bananas, animals, cheerleaders, and so on. Did you also go? And do you know the history of this festivity that lasts a week? Carnival has been a folk festival for centuries in the Netherlands and has been celebrated in secret for quite some time, because the church was not happy with this tradition. It is a Catholic festival that is celebrated in preparation for the Lent period and Easter. Carnival is also called Vastelaovend (in other words, the evening before Lent) and is an outlet for people to drink a lot and eat a lot before the abstinence from food and drink starts. But besides the drinking and eating, people also organize parades with big, self-built wagons and performances. Eventually, unrest arose over Shrove Tuesday. The regulations got tighter, and the party was celebrated more in private and more soberly in many places. In 1565, ‘s-Hertogenbosch forbade people to mock elites when they were walking dressed down the streets. Carnival was used by people as an outlet to express their daily frustrations towards the church and the elite, but the church in particular had to pay the price during these days. All kinds of traditions and rules were made fun of during carnival. An example is the ‘donkey mass,’ where a donkey was placed on the altar, after a person dressed as a priest performed a church mass. Besides this, the word ‘amen’ was replaced with the noise that donkeys make and after each sermon, everyone burped. At last, instead of burning incense, people used the sole of the shoes and black puddings were eaten on the altar. After the 18^th century, carnival was celebrated exuberantly again due to the French rule that ensured a freer religion. When in the 1960s people had more money to spend, the carnival festive blew up and was very well attended in Maastricht and ‘s-Hertogenbosch. Tilburg was jealous of the big turnout of the carnival celebration, because it had been forbidden to celebrate carnival in public for a hundred years. It was forbidden for this long, because the church had a lot of power and did not like the exuberant partying. People in Tilburg had to be secretive about partying and hide their costumes under long coats. Until the rebellious people freed themselves from the powerful church and could
therefore celebrate carnival in public again, as we do today. Alaaf!