During the chaos of the Saturnalia social classes are reversed, the slaves are served by their masters a succulent banquet on the last day before the period of abstinence (coincidentally like the one that should be observed in today's Lent) and they can even mock them without consequences, because as the saying goes: a Carnevale ogni scherzo vale (every joke is allowed at Carnival)!! In many cultures nowadays it is still like this, right?Įven in the Greek-Roman era, the mask has a mystical function.
This way, the dead were given the opportunity to return to earth to have fun in exchange for good harvests. These in fact assumed the identity of the dead by wearing a mask that acted as a link with the spiritual world. Here it becomes necessary to bother our ancestors in the first step, even the cavemen, who wore the skins and horns of their prey during ceremonies to propitiate hunting, and then the archaic populations. The mask has indeed the function of protecting who wears it in order to be able to act with impunity, to maintain anonymity, one's identity or neutrality. From ritual to theatrical or goliardic object, with a common denominator: the loss of identity by the wearer and the contextual assumption of that of others. When we think of Carnival today, the first things that come to mind are the masks and the costumes, the parades with allegorical floats and the pastries, which I told you about in my post #2.īut why do we dress up for Carnival? What is the origin and the reason for the disguise? When did we start wearing masks?ĭepending on the culture of origin, a different use has been made of it. We know that it dates back to the Greek-Roman era and that it manifested itself in unbridled excesses of all kinds in order to overturn the pre-established order to establish a new one, pure and from scratch.
#Saturnalia costume series#
In the first article of this Canival series I introduced you to the history of this ancient tradition.
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