Here in Sitges, we're starting to see the buildup to one of the biggest fiestas and party-down blowouts of the year, Carnival. (Think Carnival in Rio or Mardi Gras in New Orleans, both celebrating the same thing.)
It's interesting to think about in terms of recent discussions intiated biliously :-) by Curtis, and propagated equally biliously by myself. That is, the often unrecognized (and even more often unchallenged) assumption in many spiritual seekers that either 1) there is something "wrong" or "broken" about them that needs to be "fixed" or "rejected" before they can attain salvation or enlightenment, or 2) there is something "higher" or "better" about themselves that they can aspire to than just being themselves. Carnival, in Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox trad- itions, precedes Lent. That's where you give up for a period of forty days before Easter all of the things you enjoy most in life. :-) Carnival or Mardi Gras is the big party-down blowout the Church found was necessary before asking people to do this. :-) During Lent, people are expected to give up their "vices." You know, things like eating the "wrong" foods, partici- pating in parties or fiestas or celebrations, indulging in "bad" sexual behavior, that sorta thing. In other words, for a period of forty days they are expected to *give up* all the things they do the rest of the year, the things that pretty much make them themselves. They do this to make themselves more "holy" in anticipation of the most "holy" day of all, Easter. Think about the underlying *assumption* about this practice. These pleasures they are giving up are not "really" themselves. They are something lesser, something *not holy*, something "not pleasing to God." God, the assumption goes, would be offended if they were to enter into the celebrations sur- rounding His most holy of holy days "tainted" with having done these pleasurable things. So the Church instituted Lent, an emulation of the forty days that Moses spent on Mount Sinai before coming down with a shitload of "Thou shalt nots" carved in stone. It's also an emulation of the forty days that Jesus spent in the desert being tempted by Satan with these same "not holy" pleasures. But the Church found that they couldn't *get away* with this imposed forty-day period of being someone other than yourself without some *payoff* for the people they required to practice it. Nobody bought into it. So they instituted Carnival or Mardi Gras, during which these people who were being told to give up all of their favorite pleasures for forty days could PARTY DOWN, and indulge the hell out of these pleasures for a few days before Lent. Carnival is a short, Church-tolerated period of feast before the imposed famine. And that is pretty much what Carnival *looks like* here in Sitges. It is one enormous PARTY. Too much of a party, by my tastes, because my sleepy little beach town grows to ten times its normal population, and just walking through the streets becomes an exercise in identifying with what sardines feel like in the can. But I like it anyway, because I've noticed that modern-day Catholics, at least here in Spain, often have transcended the repressive "Thou shalt not" nature of Lent, and have instead embraced the party-down atmosphere of Carnival. They take Carnival as a Church-approved suggestion to party down and indulge their vices more than ever. And then *after* Carnival is over, they pretty much continue doing the same thing the rest of the year -- being themselves. After all, the dogma of the Church is that they can do all this and *get away with it*, as long as they confess. Me, being the Tantric kinda guy I am, I tend to see Carnival as potentially more "holy" than the period of enforced abstin- ance that follows it. It is a short period of time in which it is **OK** to be yourself. As compared to the next forty days, in which it is not. As opposed to the rest of *life*, in which they have been taught that it is *not OK* to be themselves, and that being themselves is something they have to "confess" to. So consider me a fan of Carnival, even though it is a Church holiday, and I'm not usually big on churches and their holi- days. This one is **OK** in my book, because it celebrates -- for a short period of time -- that it is **OK** to be yourself. That is rare in any religion. http://www.gaysitgesguide.com/events/sitges-carnival-gay.html http://www.whatsonwhen.com/sisp/index.htm?fx=event&event_id=23200 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival (search for 'Sitges')
