Ritual, Festival, & Religion
The association of ritual and festival
occasions is found in cultures worldwide. Louisiana with its
mingling of Catholicism, African religions, Protestant traditions,
and Native American sacred practices is known for numerous ritual
and celebratory activities.
In predominately Catholic
southern Louisiana, traditional celebratory occasions are linked
to special dates on the liturgical calendar, such as All Saints
Day (November 1) and Mardi Gras (variable, always forty days
before Easter). Folk Mardi Gras is celebrated in a vast array
of ways from the Cajun style involving clowns on horseback begging
for chicken for use in communal gumbo, to New Orleans black neighborhood
groups parading over their turf in elaborate Indian costumes.
There are also days for St. Joseph (March19) and St. Rosalie
(September 4) celebrated by Sicilian Italians, as well as a variety
of local blessings of the shrimp fleets and sugarcane fields.
Folk Catholicism is equally evident in the construction of home
altars, the placement of statues of the Virgin Mary in yards,
and the erection of shrines throughout French Louisiana.
The joining of African, European
Catholic and Protestant, and Indian sensibilities in the West
Indians and Louisiana accounts for the presence of Mardi Gras
Indian tribes and spiritual churches in New Orleans. Voodoo also
survives from Afro-Catholic sources while jazz funerals appear
to stem from West African traditions of heralding the departure
of acclaimed individuals.
North Louisiana Anglo and
Afro-American Protestantism is focused more on the "word"
of God through the rhetoric of preachers and the Bible. It has
less of the Latin icon orientation of the Catholic south. However,
many family and community ritual and festival occasions survive
in North Louisiana such as graveyard memorials, community sings,
and river baptisms.
View or Search Ritual, Festival & Religion Artifacts
of the Creole State Exhibit
