(In the middle of this, with reference to my invention LDV Day, is a discussion of men’s bodies and of sex between men in elevated language — so technically not over the line, but certainly not to everyone’s taste.)
Three different occasions that happen around this time of year, on three different schedules, but this year come together in a single week. And we’re in the midst of it. First, two festivals of pleasure: the Valentine cluster (2/12 Lincoln Darwin Day; 2/13 LDV Day; 2/14 Valentine’s Day) and
Shrove Tuesday / Mardi Gras / Carnival / Pancake 🥞 Day / Fas(t)nacht / Doughnut 🍩 Day (in the land of my childhood). A day of — depending on where you are — food excesses, sexual excesses, raucous parading in the streets in fabulous costumes, role inversions, whatever, before the 40-day shriving of Lent, the Christian season of penance before Easter’s rebirth (through crucifixion and resurrection). (from my 2/13/23 posting “Abraham Lincoln hosts two festivals of pleasure”)
Mardi Gras — by the church calendar, tomorrow, though festivities are already in progress — is a moveable feast in the Christian liturgical calendar, dependent on the date of Easter, a date that’s calculated for each year from the phases of the moon. In 2024, the two festivals of pleasure happen to coincide; today is Lincoln Darwin Day and Wednesday is Valentine’s Day (which is also a family holiday for me, since it’s my daughter Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky’s birthday).
And then in 2024 these two festivals come during the continuing celebrations of the lunar new year according to traditional Chinese reckoning (in a 12-year cycle); a Year of the Dragon began on 2/10, and the parades and displays are still going on.
That’s the outline; a few more details, with some illustrations, follow. (Oh yes, this is also today’s MQOS Not Dead Yet posting, just more elaborate than usual.)
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