For some years now I have tried to find a rationale for hosting carnival activities over the Easter weekend in Jamaica. It seems that in order to compete with Trinidad and to shore up some of the tourism dollar into our shores, Jamaica has chosen to follow our neighbours' footsteps by hosting our version of carnival once per year.

However, we have missed a very fundamental point in the whole affair as, in Trinidad, carnival is normally hosted in February in the days leading up to Ash Wednesday, the start of the Lenten season.

This is also the case with the University of the West Indies carnival which has always followed the same pattern.

One last fling

If we should follow the history of this most colourful festival, we will find that the whole idea was to have one last fling before the onset of the holy season where the reveller would enjoy themselves with riotous living and drunkenness, but making absolutely sure that all these activities should end abruptly at midnight on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday.

Even non-Christians are known to give up different vices for the period of Lent, so all in all it is a period that is marked by reverence by all and is usually followed by the Easter season of Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

How then do we in Jamaica, unlike our eastern Caribbean neighbours, see it fit to promote carnival in a primarily Christian country or see it fit to tolerate such a festival throughout this period that Christians hold dear and then to allude to the fact that we can uphold our Christian values?

I am, etc.,

CYNTHIA BURTON

cynthiaeburton@hotmail.com