Mardi Gras, which literally means “Fat Tuesday” in French, is a festive celebration which begins on or just after the Christian feast of the Epiphany and culminates on the day before Ash Wednesday. This is usually a carnival of sorts in many Christian, especially Roman Catholic, countries in which the last night before the Lenten season—a season of sacrifice and abstinence—is spent eating rich, fatty foods and engaging in other bodily excesses.
The exact origin of the Mardi Gras celebration is not clear, and no one knows for sure how, when or who first got the idea to celebrate in a bacchanalian manner the weeks before the religious observance of self-denial and sacrifice. The most popular belief about the origins of the festival is that it was a pagan celebration that was co-opted by missionaries when they were converting pagans to Christianity.
Today, Mardi Gras is also known as carnival and is observed in many predominantly Christian countries with thousands of people attending to see each separate celebration. There are various ways of celebrating the festival, depending on where it is celebrated, but almost all include extravagant parades complete with song, dance, colorful costumes, water and confetti spray, followed by feasts, drinks and street parties.