Building on the heritage of a tradition that goes over a century, the essence of Montevideo’s carnival refers to a rich collection of discourses in which dozens of popular shows review the political, social, and cultural vicissitudes of the year in a humorous manner. This work focuses on some of the discourses that reflect the multiple ways of living and feeling in the unique context of the COVID pandemic.

This paper invites not to reflect on festivals as a celebration or a transgression but to observe them as «a play with» meaning and communication. The author considers the folklore as a genuine laboratory of observation of everyday life. He illustrates his analysis with the examples of the Binche Carnival (Belgium) and of Labour Day (1st of May) and gives an interpretation with G. Bateson’s concept of «play», as the English anthropologist had used to describe the play of animals at fighting. This leads the author to strongly insist on the small details of behaviours always imprinted with a “not” characteristic of ritual contexts.

The daily Czas ( Time) daily is an important source of the social and cultural history of Cracow in the period of Galician autonomy, including the White Carnival events at the turn of 1899 and 1900. This article discusses the Carnival's most spectacular events — the End of the Century festivities, the special Christmas and New Year's Eve celebrations as well as the White Carnival dance parties. The analysis of selected issues of Czas with relevant content is focused on the editorial choice of topics as well as the manner of their presentation.

In his voluminous memoirs compiled in the early 17th century the Dominican Martin Gruneweg describes a pageant named the Parade of the Planets that took place in Warsaw on 15 February 1580. Central to its stage design was the iconography of the seven planets, each of them represented by its Zodiac sign and its affiliated House. However, no less important for the spectacle was the appearance of numerous characters and stage props from the carnival tradition, e.g. richly dressed men from the Orient, Bacchus, a procession of floats. The Parade of the Planets was a festivity which brought together the court and the townsfolk; it was probably organized by both court and town. More generally, it could be described as an urban carnival parade mimicking some features of the Renaissance Trionfo. The knowledge of celestial phenomena presented in this spectacle was probably adjusted to the needs of a wide audience of the ‘middling sort of people’, whose belief in the geocentric model of the cosmos was still intact. It seems that the Parade of the Planets contained hardly any profound insights or hermetic clues. Gruneweg, though, does find it susceptible to an allegorical interpretation which reveals the spectacle's embedding in Christian spirituality and middle-class virtues. He is pleased with the colourful spectacle, but warns of taking too much pleasure in this kind of entertainment.