Carnival

Carnival, a period of festivity in Roman Catholic countries, beginning on the day after the Epiphany, and ending at the commencement of Lent, on Ash Wednesday, resembling the Lupercalia of the Romans and the Yule-feasts of the Saxons. Some derive the word from caro (carnis), flesh, and vale, to bid adieu, i. q. farewell to flesh; others from the Italian carne, flesh, and avallare, to swallow. In mediaeval Latin it is called carnelevamen, carniprivium. The Carnival owes its origin to the pagan festivals, and pious Roman Catholics themselves have testified their sense of the scandal which this season occasions. In Rome the Carnival is observed with revelry, masquerades, feasts, and grotesque processions. The Greeks have a similar period, which they call Α᾿πόχρεως, Apocreos; it comprehends the week preceding their Lent, during which, as Marinus says, "unusquisque pro facultate sua, laute et opiparè convivatur." A good account of the Roman Carnival is given in Appleton's Cyclopaedia, 3:447. See also Nicolai, Comment. de Ritu Bacchrasw oiorum (Helmst. 1679, 4to); Zeuner, Bacchanalia Christianorum (Jena, 1699, 4to); Landon, Eccl. Dict. s.v.