According to long-held Crescent City custom, Jan. 6 is the first day of the Carnival season. Starting Monday morning New Orleanians are required by city ordinance to eat king cake at every opportunity, apply glitter to any ordinary object within reach, to wear wince-inducing purple, green and gold fashion accessories in the workplace, and to begin saying “happy Mardi Gras” to Uber drivers, even if the big day is still almost two months away. Failure to do so can result in stiff fines, payable in doubloons and golden coconuts!
Mardi Gras 2020 is comin’ to New Orleans, and it won’t be long. The Carnival season kicks off on Twelfth Night (Jan. 6) and climaxes on Fat T…
Joan of Arc parade
The 2019 Joan of Arc parade's Maid of Honor, Alyssa Fortier rides her horse along the French Quarter route.
The vanguard of Carnival season is the Francophile Joan of Arc foot parade that plies the French Quarter (where else?) starting at 7 p.m. The parade, dedicated to the 15th-century teenage warrior who was eventually burned at the stake, plunges the Vieux Carre into the depths of the Dark Ages … in a good way.
The procession is like a roving Renaissance festival, composed of a host of glittering angels, duplicitous clerics, flaming heretics, macabre living skeletons, armored soldiers, bagpipers and various St. Joan impersonators. The parade strikes a perfect balance. On one hand it acknowledges the significance and solemnity of New Orleans’ French heritage, catholic religious rites, and historical feminist heroism. On the other hand, it’s an exercise in sardonic Carnival satire.
The Krewe de Jeanne d'Arc parades in 2018 on Chartres Street in the French Quarter with their 10th annual procession celebrating Twelfth Night and the birthday of Joan of Arc, the "Maid of Orleans" who liberated the French city from a British siege in 1429. Photographed on Saturday, January 6, 2018. (Photo by Michael DeMocker, The Times-Picayune)
Paraders distribute Atomic Fireball jawbreakers, custom-made prayer cards, and … matches. Everyone pauses at the golden statue of Joan of Arc on Decatur Street, known colloquially as Joanie on the Pony, to sing happy birthday to the martyred visionary. There’s a siege cannon that shoots confetti.
The Joan of Arc parade is the ideal street performance to begin the city’s signature celebration. It’s so harmonious with New Orleans culture that you might think it’s been around since Bienville. Not so. The Joan of Arc parade popped up a mere 12 years back, when Amy Kirk-Duvoisin, an energetic aspiring playwright from Ohio, noticed a convenient coincidence. Joan of Arc (1412-1431), who heroically rescued the French city of Orleans from a British siege, was born on Twelfth Night, the kickoff of Carnival.
The truth is, the saint has nothing to do with New Orleans' march toward Mardi Gras, but with some funding from the Arts Council of New Orleans, Kirk-Duvoisin founded a new Carnival parade anyway. Thank heavens, right?
Kirk-Duvoisin stepped down as krewe captain last year. “Nothing was broken or needed to be fixed,” she said of her abdication. She just craved more time for family and non-Joan of Arc-related matters. Anyway, after 10 years, the parade was an institution.
“It’s become part of the fabric of the season,” Kirk-Duvoisin said with wonder. “It’s a symbol of something I can’t quite put my finger on. It may be more meaningful than I ever intended.”
Longtime krewe members Antoinette de Alteriis and Amanda Helm have taken the reins as co-captains.
The 2020 parade marks the 100th anniversary of Joan of Arc’s canonization. Expect new parade props, including a miniature version of the façade of Notre Dame Cathedral, portable stained-glass windows and a new golden Joan statue topped with a canopy.
This year’s queen is former art gallery owner and social scene stalwart Margarita Bergen. The king is French-born sign-making master Simon. And the horseback Maid of Honor (representing Joan of Arc as a young girl) is Lusher high school student Zoe Kanga.
The parade starts on Bienville Street at North Front Street near the riverfront and heads into the French Quarter. It turns right on Chartres Street, right on Ursulines Street and right on Decatur Street, disbanding near Washington Artillery Park. As always, the parade pauses for a toast to French dignitaries at the Historic New Orleans Collection (Chartres and Conti Streets), for a blessing at St. Louis Cathedral (in Jackson Square) and to sing “Happy Birthday” at Joan’s statue (near Ursulines and Decatur Streets).
Phunny Phorty Phellows
Prior to 2008, the harbinger of Carnival wasn’t a parade, it was a rolling party set aboard a St. Charles Avenue streetcar. Since 1981, a small krewe, called the Phunny Phorty Phellows has toasted the arrival of the season at the Willow Street streetcar barn. At 7 p.m., the Champagne-infused costumers wave goodbye to a gathering of well-wishers as they head off for a squealing, jolting ride to Canal Street and back.
Funky Uptown Krewe
Funky Uptown Krewe co-founder Craig Mangum (second from the left), who moved to New Orleans from Nashville, said that idea to emulate the Phunny Phorty Phellows took root last year during some inspirational cocktailing at the Avenue Pub after the annual PPP Twelfth Night ride
Starting last year, a second streetcar, occupied by the Funky Uptown Krewe follows the Phunny Phorty Phellows on the St. Charles route, passing out glitter-encrusted vinyl record albums (an inefficient antique music storage system, for you younger readers) as they go.
Funky Uptown Krewe parade map
Societé des Champs Elyseé
Members of the Societé des Champs Elysée display the krewe banner in 2017.
Starting in 2017, the Societé des Champs Elyseé has been the downtown streetcar route’s answer to the Phunny Phorty Phellows. Regrettably, the Rampart Street rolling streetcar party is impossible this year because of the Hard Rock Hotel collapse on Oct. 12 that cost three lives and closed the Regional Transit Authority streetcar line. Instead, the krewe plans to gather at the Elysian Fields streetcar stop at 7:30 p.m. then pop into a few saloons and eateries along St. Claude Avenue.
Krewe Des Fleurs
Members of the Krewe Des Fleurs perform as the Mystic Krewe of Femme Fatale rolls on the Uptown route Sunday, Feb. 24, 2019
The Krewe Des Fleurs marching group, which usually debuts its new costumes in the French Quarter on Jan. 6, has postponed this year’s blossoming until Saturday, Jan. 11, starting at 2:30 p.m. at Armstrong Park.
Note: This story was revised on Dec. 31 to better describe Joan of Arc's relationship to the city of Orleans.
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