How does United States mark Carnival?
Mardi Gras
- Local date
- February 9, 2027
- When is it?
- The forty-seventh day before Easter, the day before Ash Wednesday.
The United States has no national Carnival. Mardi Gras is a Louisiana state holiday, written into R.S. 1:55 among the days of public rest — listed alongside New Year's Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Veterans' Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas, on which state employees are not to work so far as is practicable. The same section then hands the decision downward: in twenty-nine named parishes — Orleans, St. Bernard, Jefferson and the rest — and in all municipalities, Mardi Gras is a holiday when the governing authority declares it so by ordinance. Whether the day is off is therefore decided level by level in the United States: not federally, yes in Louisiana, and elsewhere only where a town has passed that ordinance.
What is this topic?
Carnival is not a public holiday in Brazil. It is a *ponto facultativo* — a discretionary day off that the management ministry designates by decree each year for federal offices, with Ash Wednesday running only until two in the afternoon. The largest festival on earth has no statutory holiday status in its own country; it rests on an administrative order reissued every year. The United States turned it into a Louisiana state holiday, Japan moved it to August and dropped the fast, and Goa kept the form left behind by Portuguese rule.
Sources and dates
Dates follow local time zones, calendars, and official notices. Check the source when a date is estimated or locally variable.