Before Today Ends, Find Some Way to Exuberantly Celebrate Who God Has Made You!

Carnival Day in Düsseldorf, Germany

Today is Mardi Gras also known in other languages and cultures as Shrove Tuesday (English), Fastnacht (German), Carnevale (Italian), Selma (Swedish), Tsiknopempti (Greek), Užgavėnės (Lithuanian), Carnival (Brazilian). . . and I can go on and on.  Suffice it to say that this celebration of extravagant partying before the austerity of a penitential Lent is universal across Christendom.  Because the celebrations are loud, unusual, campy, and excessive, some people, especially religious people, in every culture, condemn the festival.

As I think about the naysayers, I couldn’t help but think that those kinds of condemnations are often the same ones that people, especially religious people, in every culture use to condemn LGBTQ+ peope.  Never mind that though some LGBTQ+ people present in extreme ways publicly, the vast majority do not. But naysayers don’t want to accept that simple truth.

In a short essay on katholisch.de, Peter Otten, a pastoral assistant at St. Agnes Parish in Cologne, Germany, recently examined the negative attitudes some folks have towards Mardi Gras celebrations, and finds these critiques counter to Catholic understanding of God.  Otten says that the revelers in his home region answer the critics with a simple statement: “D’r leeve Jott ist nit esu.” God is God, not an accountant. He goes onto explain:

“That’s a beautiful thought. Because the Christian faith has never been solely serious. It knows joy, physicality, and exuberant fellowship. God, after all, became human. Not an idea, and certainly not a moral code. Therefore, spirituality and closeness to God must also manifest themselves in what is close to human beings: in shared celebration, in dancing, in exuberance, and even in pushing boundaries. For the Christian hope of resurrection ultimately transcends all conceivable limits. If you are to believe ‘that love conquers all’—then it makes sense to experience that in life. For example, at Carnival.”

Again, as I read this passage, I couldn’t help but think of LGBTQ+ Catholics whose simple existence challenges the wider church to push their boundaries about what is considered human nature.

Otten addresses another dimension of Mardi Gras:

“During Carnival, the world is turned upside down. Roles are reversed, authorities are mocked, and the powerful are caricatured. This freedom of fools is more than just slapstick. It exposes arrogance and relativizes hierarchies. A motif that is deeply biblical. “The last will be first,” says Jesus, as if he himself were a fool. Carnival is a field test for this beautiful idea.”

I couldn’t help but think of drag queens and kings who often parody gender excesses, same-gender couples whose simple desire for love and commitment expose the privileges and restricting conventions of heterosexual mariage, and transgender people who make people question their assumptions about what defines a man or a woman.

And there is one more important Mardi Gras feature that Otten notes:

“. . . [P]eople come together. They laugh together, sing the same songs, sway, and link arms. In a time of increasing isolation, this is no small matter. ‘Come on, let’s dance! All night long until tomorrow morning!’ How wonderful! Somewhere there, heaven begins. Alaaf!” (Hurrah!)

I have long believed that people with anti-LGBTQ+ attitudes are deserving of pity because they miss out on the joyous coming together that LGBTQ+ people experience.  Because almost all LGBTQ+ people experience a kind of new life when they come out of the closet to live their true selves, they break the chains of isolation which kept them imprisoned in loneliness and inauthenticity.  What a beautiful thing to celebrate with song, dancing, and linking of arms!  And even greater joy when LGBTQ+ people and their heterosexual and cisgender friends join together in mutually celebrating their differing gifts!

Yes, that certainly must be what heaven is like.

—Francis DeBernardo, New Ways Ministry, February 17, 2026