In November 2020, when New Orleans officials announced the cancellation of the city’s annual Mardi Gras parades to prevent the spread of COVID-19, locals quickly started devising plans to celebrate the holiday in a safer, more socially distanced manner.
Throughout the greater New Orleans area, thousands of homes are being decorated with props, signs and papier-mâché as part of a “house float” movement that began shortly after the Fat Tuesday festivities were called off.
Instead of gathering in the streets to watch the floats roll by this year, the plan is to have revelers load up in their cars and drive around the city to ogle at the houses that have been decorated to look like floats, kind of like a Mardi Gras version of Christmas light displays.
According to The Associated Press, the whole movement began with a joke that New Orleanian Megan Joy Boudreaux posted on Twitter the day the cancellations were announced.
“Turn your house into a float and throw all the beads from your attic at your neighbors walking by,” she wrote.
Eventually, Boudreaux became convinced it was actually a good idea and so began Krewe of House Floats, a Facebook group she created, thinking only a few of her friends might decide to join in on the fun.
As of Jan. 27, Boudreaux is managing an active group of over 12,000 members. The page is rife with posts about decoration tutorials, neighborhood themes and ads for props.
“Inspiration struck at the right time and the universe put me in the right place,” she said (via NOLA.com)
Boudreaux has used the site to promote commission work from artists and suppliers who’ve been affected by the parade cancellation. Since the Facebook group went live, local artist Dominic “Dom” Graves has hosted more than 20 classes in papier-mâché techniques for $100 a person, The Associated Press reports.
“You can cancel the parades, but you can’t cancel Mardi Gras,” said Boudreaux (via The Wall Street Journal).
Tom Fox and his wife, Madeline, decorated their home with a Spongebob Squarepants scene that includes jellyfish made from bowls found at a dollar store. The New Orleans community may be seeing a new tradition unfold in real time, Tom said.
“Even when Mardi Gras comes back, I think people are going to keep doing this,” he said (via The Associated Press).
According to The Wall Street Journal, the Krewe of House Floats plans to publish a map of participating houses on its website on Feb. 1, pointing locals to where they can see their neighbors’ creativity on display from the safety of their own cars.