Carnival

a farewell to meat. A time of feasting prior to the forty days of Lent, during which abstinence from eating meat is enjoined. It is observed throughout Roman Catholic countries as a season of merriment, revelry, feasts, dances, operas. In southern Europe much of the jollity has been handed down from the Bacchanalia, or feasts of Bacchus; and in the north, the old Yuletide banquets and drinking bouts have shaded off into carnival festivities. Whether the newspaper and the railroads are the cause or not, carnival festivities are not what they formerly were. See New Orleans