It’s the day of the feast, y’all!
For those of you new to NOLA history and lore, The Feast of The Epiphany is the day some Catholic cities like New Orleans celebrate those Three Wise Men and their swag bag of gifts rolling up on the only infant more famous than Baby Yoda, Jesus Christ himself. Feast day, aka Twelfth Night, kicks off our beloved, bedazzled, and delightfully bizarre Carnival season, the weeks-long, parade-laden, cake and booze binge which culminates in a city-wide costume party on Mardi Gras Day. We mark the start of the season, unsurprisingly, with parades, including one eye-catching procession of saints and sinners which goes straight through the French Quarter, The Krewe of Joan D’Arc.
NOLA newcomers, history nerds, aspiring knights, and revolutionaries should all head down to the Quarter this evening for this walking (and sometimes mounted) parade honoring Saint Joan. (Joan of Arc’s birthday coincides with Epiphany, and Joan was Super French and Christian, and New Orleans is Super French and Christian, hence a parade for Joan of Arc to kick off Carnival. It all makes more sense if you’re drinking.) Joan, of course, is the famed female war hero who was commanded by God to help liberate the city of Orleans, France, from British attack and then was burned alive as a heretic for making dudes feel so inadequate. Folks attending this particular parade can expect to see tons of medieval garb, costumes playing with French and religious iconography, drunken knights, and a looootta angels/saints cutting a raucous path through one of the oldest cities in the United States...it’s not a bad way to start the week.
Hottest Hell closes for the Twelfth Night revelry but will be back to our regularly scheduled tours on Tuesday.