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the origin of carnival thread got me thinking, and i was wondering if any african country celebrate carnival the way west indians do it? or still have celebration that looks like something we would call carnival?

Yeah I was in the Smithsonian African Art Museum in late August of last year, and they had an exhibit with footage of an African festival that when I looked at it reminded me alot of carnival and playing mas.

I'm not sure what the festival was called ...

Looks like Nigeria just got hooked:
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index...le?id=61368138

BUt I'm not sure that is what "......" ( ) was talking about...

I have read the article, but I would like to think that what Nigeria is interested in is the Trinidad aspect of the mas: the Trinidad version of the Carnival. Nigeria itself is no stranger to the masquerade since it has had its own celebrations for hundreds of years.

As I had tried to point out in my essay and in the subsequent posts, the Carnival celebrations in the Caribbean were fed by primarily by Catholic, Chinese and Indian influences but the origins lie in African fertility festivals and masking rituals including the Egungun festival of West Africa. In fact, their Mas is about to begin: depending on which West African state one may find oneself in, the festivals begin in March and last anywhere from 17 days to three months (if dat did happen here, Trini woulda dead). Note the period, March; the same period as Easter. Why? Because they are both one and the same. It's just that one strain became part of Christian tradition .

To go a little deeper into that, you may or may not see a connection...I do think there is some truth in the notion that many things that are celebrated in the Christian world are things that they used to entice "pagans" to convert...

Any thoughts?

O yeah, definitely. Almost all of them were copied from “pagan” beliefs, rituals and writings with the earliest known of them all being the Yusirian/Osirian Drama of Egypt. There is little use debating the question about the origins of Christian tenets, rituals and even Gospel writings. I think the choosing of December 25th as the official date of Xmas by the Church because this was the feast day of the Egyptian deity Heru/Horus and the Persian deity Mithra is or should be well known because I have seen it mentioned in many newspapers, but it may not be well known that this also applies to just about everything else in Christianity (Xianity).

In many cases they were copied in order to win converts to the then new faith and many of the early Church bishops openly said as much in their journals or when they were attempting to debate so-called pagan writers who were pointing out the similarities in their doctrines. Carnival, Easter, Xmas, All Saints/All Souls etc, etc, etc, all came to be part of Christianity in that fashion – though in some cases it was because the Church attempted to suppress the belief and, being unable to do so, simply co-opted the older custom. This was especially the case with All Saints, Xmas and Easter. Even the “X” in Xmas, which is said to be the Greek rendition of “Christ” (Chi) can be traced back to the Egyptians through Greece and Pompeii while the name “Easter” comes from “Eostre” or Ostara: the Anglo-Saxon Goddess of spring.

People fail to realize that. Things are never quite as you simple as people would have you think they are. Sometime you have you to go out and "unlearn" some things.

True, but it's not an easy thing to unlearn much of what one was socialised into accepting. Don't think I didn't have a problem with some of this info when I was first exposed to it, especially since at the time I was very much involved in the church. As can be seen on one of the discussions going on right now on Original Backchat, some ppl simply will not come away from whatever their priest or pastor drilled into their heads (which is why former English lecturer Denis Solomon always places religious education in the category of child abuse)

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