Mardi Gras is one of my favorite holidays, and I’ve begun to notice a worrisome pattern: How I feel about a given holiday seems to depend in large part upon the amount and quality of food and/or candy I am both given and allowed to consume on said day. It’s a wonder I’m not 500 pounds.

Apart from King cakes and the general sense of indulgence that surrounds the holiday, I like Mardi Gras because the people who celebrate it most exuberantly always seem to be so happy, so excited about something. Their excitement makes me want to be in on the secret. It might just be the result of an excess of liquor and sugar, but I always like to think that, for some of the celebrants, there’s more happening.

Ayn Rand wrote that “celebrations should be only for those who have something to celebrate.” I don’t completely agree with that for reasons I won’t go into here and indeed think Rand’s intended meaning was rather different than the way in which I interpret the line. I like the line, though, because the concept of “having something to celebrate,” the notion that my festivity can, and should, be the result of something besides my temper at any given moment, appeals to me.

I like the idea of having a party because you’re having a good time, rather than going to a party to have a good time: having a party not in the hopes of creating something you’ll enjoy but because you already have something you want to honor and rejoice in. Too often, restless and not content to just be, I end up going out looking for a “good time” and often, unsurprisingly, don’t find what I’m looking for. (Metaphorically, that is: Goodness knows one never has to try hard to find a party in Knoxville.) That phrase of Rand’s makes me hopeful that there are those who do indeed have “something to celebrate,” something that is identifiable and whose existence is not subject to their mood that day or whether or not they feel like going out that night. I like Mardi Gras because the parties surrounding the occasion seem to be a result rather than a cause.

It’s probably completely in my mind that Mardi Gras revelers are somehow more festive than other holiday celebrants. Though in practice modern Mardi Gras celebrations are wholly divorced from their religious precursors, and in some ways antithetical to them, I still make the antiquated connection between Mardi Gras and the Christian season of Lent and holiday of Easter. The Easter holiday is the crux of the Christian faith, the ultimate “something to celebrate” for Christians. I think my subconscious makes that connection between the meaningful celebration at the end of the Lenten season and the festivities at its beginning as if Mardi Gras participants are so festive because they are looking past the impending solemnity of Lent forward to the coming of the reason for their faith.

I know for most (including me, if I’m honest) Mardi Gras is just another day on which it is socially appropriate “to let loose,” and that its festive nature is just the result of a fateful combination of alcohol, sugar and lack of sleep. There’s nothing wrong with having culturally sanctioned occasions for people to blow off steam, and in fact I think it’s healthy in moderation. There’s a part of me, though, that hopes that some people do have something over which they are rejoicing when they celebrate Mardi Gras, when they “celebrate” in general — that there are some who are not blowing off steam but have mastered that happy secret of being joyful in all circumstances and whose gaiety is based on some external, abiding cause. If that’s true, then maybe there’s hope that I can find that too.

Have a very happy Mardi Gras, and enjoy your King cakes.

— Leigh Dickey is a junior in global studies. She can be reached at [email protected].