carnival

chained_bear "Whatever social category you had been boxed into—male or female, rich or poor—carnival was a chance to escape from it."
—Barbara Ehrenreich, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), 88

Great book, by the way, if you have an interest in carnival. Here's another paragraph that I found compelling:

"Finally, with secularization, there had to be a realization that festivity, even when it occurred on religious holidays, was ultimately a product of human agency. Ancient Dionysian revelers and Christian glossolaliacs believed that their moments of ecstasy were the gifts of a deity. But when the church doors closed shut on festivity in the late Middle Ages, the revelers must have understood that whatever joys they found were of their own, entirely human, creation. Huge amounts of effort and expense went into a successful celebration: Costumes had to be sewed, dance steps and dramas rehearsed, sets built, special pastries and meats prepared. Pleasures crafted with so much creativity and forethought—pleasures that, moreover, were often barely tolerated by the ecclesiastical establishment—can hardly be said to come from God. In the secularized festivities of the late Middle Ages, people could discover the truth of Mikhail Bakhtin's great insight: that carnival is something people create and generate for themselves. Or, as Goethe wrote, carnival 'is a festival that really is not given to the people, but one the people give themselves.'"
(p. 94–95) Mar 13, 2009

vanishedone This being Wordie, naturally the etymological discussion of carnival is on shrovetide. Feb 16, 2009