Carnival a foreign culture?

Lavinia McClure, Contributor

CARNIVAL COMES once a year - a time for merriment and fun, dancing and drinking, whatever. How did this festival start in the first place? And what brought it to us here in Jamaica? Read on.

Bacchus was the god of wine, fruitfulness, fertility and ecstasy, according to Greek mythology. He was also known as Dionysus, and Liber was his Roman name, a word from which comes libation.

The secret rites of Bacchanalia, a festival celebrating Bacchus, go back as far as 1400 BCE in recorded history and probably before. The Bacchanalia, or Dionysia, were initially attended only by women, and later men were permitted to join. What started as a celebration three days each year later became a weekly, or even prolonged event.

Women abandoned their families and took to the hills to perform their festive rites. They danced to flute and drum, dressed in skins and leaves. While under the god's inspiration, they were believed to possess occult powers. There was a wild orgiastic meal where there was free use of wine to produce ecstasy, and animals were ripped apart with bare hands and devoured by the participants through their supernatural powers supplied by the god. The celebrations had such a bad reputation for orgies that by 186 BCE, they were outlawed in Rome, but they were still practised in secret for over 700 more years. To this day, the word 'bacchanal' is still used to describe a drunken orgy.

Church 'saving' festivals

The Catholic Church, in its early days, was busy converting pagan festivals into Christian observances. Christmas and Easter are two popular examples. The Church, in observing the Lenten season, opted for abstinence from meat, to remember the lean times that our Lord experienced in the wilderness.

The festival which was celebrated before Lent was the Carnival. The word carnival can be traced back to its medieval origins. Carnem lavare or carnele varium both meant to take away or remove meat. It was a time to have a final fling before the lean times, when no fun or partying would be allowed. In the Catholic regions of Europe, the clergy demanded a strict break with pre-Christian ideas and practices, but the customary ceremonies and symbols were adapted with a Christianised reinterpretation.

Carnival takes all

Bacchanalia had always been the most popular festival practised by the peasants and it was incorporated into the pre-Lenten carnival. The noise and music were originally to drive harmful spirits away, the masks in the masquerade were to transform the bearers into supernatural beings, ceremonial fire and various individual abstentions were to ensure the success of magic acts. All of these elements were carried over into the carnival, along with the drunken orgies for which Bacchanalia was infamous.

Carnival has always been a standard celebration in Roman Catholic countries, but how did it take Jamaica? Once the University of the West Indies (UWI) opened in 1948, the crossover of cultures began. Some of our small-island neighbours introduced us to carnival.

First, there was UWI Carnival, which was later followed by Orange Carnival, Oakridge Carnival, Jamaica Carnival, Bacchanal Jamaica and Island Mas Jamaica, among many others. The main differences between carnival in Jamaica and the other islands is that ours is solely a commercial series of events held by private entrepreneurs and has no state controls or religious significance.

Galatians 5:19-21 commends us to resist the acts of the sinful nature, including sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, drunkenness and orgies, or we will not inherit the Kingdom of God. As Christians, we have no choice. Carnival is foreign to our country, our culture and our religion. We cannot support it here.

As Christians, we have no choice. Carnival is foreign to our country, our culture and our religion. We cannot support it here.