7th Grade Ch. 1 Sec. 1 and 2 Quiz

Ch. 1 Sec. 2: Louisiana’s Festivals
          People first organized their lives around the seasons and only later developed the formal calendar. The earliest festivals celebrated a successful harvest. In Louisiana, the harvest festivals have expanded into year-round fun.
August and September
          The Shrimp Festival began in Morgan City more than sixty years ago. The blessing of the shrimp fleet by a priest combines a religious rite and a social occasion, which is common in Louisiana culture.
          The Frog Festival began in Acadia Parish more than twenty-five years ago. The city of Rayne calls itself the “Frog Capital of the World” and festival goers can enjoy eating frog legs while watching frog jumping contests.
          Festival Acadiens in Lafayette brings more than 100,000 people together every year to celebrate the French heritage with dancing and music.
          Alligators are the focus at a festival in St. Charles Parish, highlighting alligator meat cooked any way you want it, and alligator hides for sale.
          New Iberia holds the Sugar Cane Festival, serving as a pause before the hectic time of actual harvest, or cane grinding. This festival serves as one of the state’s oldest.
October and November
          Shreveport, the largest city in North Louisiana, celebrates the Red River Revel, an art show and sale. Fanfare is another program displaying the culture of the region through fine arts, literature, and theater, held in Hammond.
          In Acadia Parish, the heart of Cajun country, residents celebrate the traditional German Oktoberfest, highlighting German bands, singing, and foods. The publicity poster says Wilkommen, the German word for “welcome”.
          Zwolle, along the Texas border, recognizes its ties to Spanish and Native American cultures with the Tamale Festival combining these two legacies.
          The Giant Omelette Festival has an especially interesting history. Legend has it that an innkeeper in a small French village made a fine omelette for Napoleon, which had him direct everyone in the village to collect as many eggs as they could, combining them to make a giant omelette to feed his army. The tradition continues today, with French villages making huge omelettes to feed the poor at Easter.
          The International Rice Festival, Yambilee Festival, and the Louisiana Pecan Festival all serve as ways to celebrate three important crops in Louisiana-rice, yams, and pecans.
December
          The Christmas Festival of Lights in Natchitoches fills its riverbank and town with lights, food, and music on the first Saturday in December. In St. James Parish, families build wooden structures made to look like houses, steamboats, or tepees, and burn them during large bonfires along the Mississippi levee on Christmas Eve.
January and February
          At the Creole Heritage Day Celebration, traditional skills are demonstrated such as making filé, powder for gumbo from the leaves of the sassafras tree. Gumbo is a traditional Louisiana dish, a hearty Creole soup made of seafood, chicken, okra, and other vegetables.
March and April
          Baton Rouge and New Orleans both celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with parades and wearing green to honor the Irish heritage of Louisiana. The Strawberry Festival in Ponchatoula draws a large crowd in the spring for music and regional foods highlighting Tangipahoa grown strawberries.
          The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival brings more visitors to Louisiana than any celebration except Mardi Gras. Thousands of musicians come to perform every style of music at the fairgrounds.
May
          Breaux Bridge is known as the “Crawfish Capital of the World”, with their Crawfish Festival starting in 1959. Gonzales, just south of Baton Rouge, holds the Jambalaya Festival to determine the jambalaya champion of the state. Jambalaya—a spicy dish of rice and meat—is considered a basic dish in Cajun kitchens. This was developed from a Spanish dish called paella as a result of cultural diffusion when the Acadians came to Spanish Louisiana during the colonial period.
June and July
          Peaches and blueberries are the highlights of their festivals in Ruston and Mansfield. The Blueberry Festival also includes traditional northwest Louisiana culture with barbeque and country music.
Mardi Gras
          Louisiana’s biggest celebration is of course Mardi Gras. The tradition began in Europe and was brought to Louisiana by the first French explorers. Mardi Gras is the festive time before the solemn religious season of Lent. The forty days of Lent are part of the Christian religion, especially in the Roman Catholic Church. Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, and Mardi Gras Day is the day before. Mardi Gras means “Fat Tuesday”.
          The celebration of Mardi Gras in Louisiana actually begins on January 6, also known as Twelfth Night. The traditional country version of Mardi Gras takes place in Basile, Church Point, Eunice, and Mamou described as “running the Mardi Gras”, where masked riders on horseback go from house to house collecting food for the community feast.