Carnival is the old time masquerader playing “bookman” taking notes as he drifts along.

The Carnival season has always stood at odds with the season of Lent, which it precedes. Carnival is a season of excess, Lent a time of fast and abstinence.

Although the origin of the word carnival is uncertain, the more popular and likely theories suggest that it derives from a combination of Latin words meaning “farewell to the flesh.”

In some of our neighbouring Caribbean territories, it is true that Carnival is celebrated at different times of the year and so bears no particular relation to Lent, but that has not been our story.

Trinidad and Tobago 's celebration is always with reference to Lent. Carnival has kept the religious season in peripheral view and so invariably draws the individual into a conversation with God, about what is right and fitting and good.

In other ways too, the celebration has always been for us a little different from festivities in other parts of the world. For one thing, here at home it exhibits a unique creativity and artistry. Carnival can be a great teacher for our youth.

Young pannists learn discipline. The panyard is an environment where the skills of budgeting and marketing can be also developed. And, for those who sing and write calypsoes it is an opportunity for developing and acquiring new skills.

In more recent years, however, Carnival in the local setting has seemed to detach itself more and more from its Lenten moorings. Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent has become for many—perhaps increasingly so—another day of revelry even if at a reduced pace, as the scenes at Manzanilla and Maracas beaches make evident.

Abandoning of Gospel values

Some might argue that what has happened over the years is that the religious observance has become more internalised; that while in the public sphere it may seem to have lost ground the personal and spiritual aspects of Lent have remained or even deepened.

They may point to the fact that on Ash Wednesday, the lines of people seeking the customary “ashes” have not shortened. But, these long lines are hardly a source of comfort.

How people participate in Carnival, including the days preceding Monday and Tuesday, must also be saying something about the conversation they choose to have with God.

To lose sight of Lent is to lose sight of Carnival as it has been traditionally celebrated here in our nation. When Carnival leads to the abandoning of God and Gospel values it cannot be good for Carnival, it does the soul of our nation no good.

The festive season is not untouched by the growing secular mood of relativism that makes the individual the soul arbiter of what is good and right. Speaking of this trend in the encyclical Veritatis Splendor (1993) Pope John Paul II wrote that modern thinking has “gone so far as to exalt freedom to such an extent that it becomes an absolute, which would then be the source of values.”

Further, he says, “there is a tendency to grant to the individual conscience the prerogative of independently determining the criteria of good and evil and then acting accordingly.”

A valuable link exists between Lent and Carnival in our land. As Lent goes so does Carnival; as our particular brand of Carnival disappears so does Lent.

The bookman is taking notes.