About Carnival
Carnival is the great pre-Lenten release of the Christian calendar — the last five days of feasting, dancing and excess before the forty fasting days of Lent that begin on Ash Wednesday. Its name probably derives from the Latin carne levare, 'to take away the meat'. Variants spread from medieval Italy across Catholic Europe and, with the Atlantic slave trade, were transformed in the Caribbean and South America into something only the New World could have made — Rio's samba, Trinidad's soca and steelpan, Barranquilla's cumbia, New Orleans' second-line.
For a deeper historical treatment, see Carnival — Wikipedia.
Each Carnival is its own city: Rio's escolas de samba parade for a week through the Sambódromo; Venice's masked ball revives the courtly traditions of the Serenissima; Cologne's Karneval inverts the social order with foolish 'crazy days'; Oruro in Bolivia performs the Diablada of dancing devils that UNESCO inscribed on the Intangible Heritage list. Cards and invitations sent for Carnival tend to be exuberant, masked, and unapologetically sequinned.
Traditional greetings
The phrases below are the ones most often used to mark Carnival in person, by phone, and on cards. The native-script column shows the greeting as a recipient would read it; the transliteration is for those who would like to say it aloud; the English column is a literal rather than a poetic translation.
| Language | Greeting | Transliteration | English |
|---|---|---|---|
| Portuguese | Bom Carnaval | Good Carnival | |
| Spanish | Feliz Carnaval | Happy Carnival | |
| Italian | Buon Carnevale | Good Carnival | |
| French | Joyeux Mardi Gras | Happy Fat Tuesday | |
| German | Alaaf! | (Cologne Karneval call) |
Design tips for printable Carnival cards
Hand-printed cards for Carnival reward restraint and specific reference. The notes below distil what the most thoughtful cards in the tradition tend to do — and what the most commercial ones tend to get wrong.
- A single feathered mask in foil gold against deep magenta carries the entire festival.
- Use the 'Mardi Gras three' — purple, green, gold — only for New Orleans cards; Rio runs riot in every colour at once.
- Brazilian samba-school enredo motifs change every year; for an evergreen card, abstract the feathers and drums.
- Foil-stamp confetti scattered across the inside fold for tactile delight.
- For Venice cards, switch to chiaroscuro — black, ivory, gold leaf — and the bauta or moretta mask.
A starting palette:
Five verses for Carnival cards
Each verse below is short enough to copy onto a folded card by hand. They progress from formal to intimate; pick the one that best fits the relationship and the year you are writing into.
- Five days, one city, every colour at once — bom Carnaval.
- May this Carnival be everything Lent isn't, and may you make it through Ash Wednesday without regret.
- Feathers, drums, sequins, samba, sweat — and the long, slow walk home as the sun comes up. Feliz Carnaval.
- From Rio to Trinidad to Venice to Cologne — the whole world insisting on joy at the same time.
- Buon Carnevale, joyeux Mardi Gras, alaaf, alaaf! Wherever you are dancing tonight, I am dancing too.
Related cultural holidays
Other holidays observed in the Latin America family of traditions: