Festivities mark Carnival start

• By ALLEN M. JOHNSON JR.
• Advocate New Orleans bureau
• Published: Jan 7, 2009 - Page: 8B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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NEW ORLEANS — The long Carnival season got under way in New Orleans on Tuesday, with masked balls, king cake parties, and small parades. Everywhere else, it was just Jan. 6.

Just ask Jolie Bonck, a former queen of the Phunny Phorty Phellows, the Carnival organization known for its annual streetcar party on “Twelfth Night.”

“‘A little nonsense every now and then is relished by the best of men,’ ” said Bonck, quoting a club motto.

Costumed as the feline in the children’s story, “The Owl and the Pussycat,” Bonck hurried around her Mid-City home Tuesday afternoon before leaving to pick up her husband, Jim Hobbs, a.k.a. “The Owl,” en route to the Phunny Phorty Phellows annual streetcar parade Tuesday night.

“The Phunny Phorty Phellows really put 12th night on the map,” Carnival historian Errol Laborde said. “Since the streetcar started in 1982, more and more people are celebrating Jan. 6.”

Mayor Ray Nagin and City Council members — and a live jazz band — hosted a king cake party Tuesday morning.

“I can’t wait,” Nagin said of Mardi Gras.

Colored in purple, green and gold, the king cakes — believed to have originated in France around the 12th century — are eaten throughout Carnival season.

On 12th night — Jan. 6 or the Feast of the Epiphany — they mark the arrival of the three wise men bearing gifts 12 days after Christmas.

The Roman Catholic Church set the date for the beginning of Carnival at Jan. 6 — and the fluctuating, Lenten-oriented date of Mardi Gras, according to Carnival historian Arthur Hardy’s 2009 “Mardi Gras Guide.” Mardi Gras falls on Feb. 24 this year.

Carnival offers an economic stimulus as well, proponents say, though no study has been published since Katrina.

“New Orleans is riding the recession better than most cities,” Laborde said, adding that Mardi Gras helps hotels, bakeries and tailors, to name just a few businesses. Truck “floats” in some of the 30-plus Carnival parades advertise for paid revelers in the classified ads of local newspapers.

At a Joseph A. Banks store in Metairie on Saturday, sales clerks told customers they would have to wait at least a month for alterations to newly purchased suits — partly because of the crush of business from Carnival social functions.