Super Sunday in New Orleans

A St. Joseph's Day Alter

I was immediately very interested when we began talking about St. Joseph's day in class.  As my Dad's side of the family is Catholic and my family is very Italian, I have definitely heard of St. Joseph before.  In New Orleans, and in Boston, where my Dad's family lives, St. Joseph's day is a city-wide day of feasting.  Public and private alters are often built for St. Joseph in honor of him.  There are often parties in which people eat the food from the alter, or the food is given to charities.  As I have written in a previous post, the Mardi Gras Indians march and there are some truck parades that take place on the closest Sunday to St. Joseph's day, called Super Sunday.  St. Joseph's day is often on March 19th.  I recognized St. Joseph's day from the practice of burying a small statue of him upside down in the front yard of a house to get a house to sell more promptly and to make more money of the sale.  My father did this when I was a child at our house, and I can recall helping him bury in it.  Whether it was because of the statue or because of the market, our house did sell within the next month. 

This year, Super Sunday will fall on March 17th.  This will be the last donning of their costumes for the season.  Festivities begin at noon in A.L. Davis Park to parade and confront other Indian "gangs."  This is a tradition that has gone on since before World War I, and I highly recommend that people go see the Mardi Gras Indians one last time for the season.