Can you ever have too much Carnival fun?

The Dutch city of Den Bosch has just announced it will be forbidding celebrations on the Thursday before Carnival weekend. Cancelling the unofficial start of Carnival is the Municipality’s reaction to increasing unrest about overcrowding and negative impacts for residents, which has increased since the Covid pandemic.

The overcrowding noted in a number of Dutch cities since the pandemic is probably a reaction to the restrictions placed on Carnival and other events during Covid. Data from the Carnival Around the World Project, originated by Dr Lénia Marques of the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, shows that people in the Netherlands have made up for lost party time by celebrating Carnival over more days. However, these long-term data also show that the current average length of Carnival celebrations is simply a return to levels seen in 2017 and 2028, and actually less than 2019 (the last pre-Covid year) and a lot lower than the first Covid year in 2020.

Average number of days celebrating Carnival for respondents in the Netherlands (Source: Carnival Around the World Project).

It is also interesting to compare the Dutch data with our surveys in Brazil. Before Covid, the average Brazilian Carnival-goer spent nearly twice as many days celebrating as their Dutch counterparts. But as in the Netherlands, partying was curtailed during the Covid years, when Brazilians spent an average 3 days Celebrating, about the same level as in the Netherlands. Post-Covid, Brazil also saw a rebound, but with the average length of Carnival celebrations much lower than before.

Average number of days celebrating Carnival for respondents in Brazil (Source: Carnival

Around the World Project).

Our research underlines the importance of understanding the drivers of Carnival celebrations and the motives of participants, as we showed in previous research. In Den Bosch there have been calls to make Carnival a more local celebration again, rather than a party for people from all parts of the country. A return to traditional forms of celebration has also been encouraged with the banning of people wearing banana costumes and other ‘inappropriate’ garb.

But trying to limit Carnival celebrations could be a forlorn task, because people might simply go and party elsewhere, or at a different time. We reported earlier on the growing popularity of 11th November as the start of the Carnival season in the Netherlands, when Den Bosch now has around 100,000 visitors. Trying to stop people having fun is extremely challenging, as many scholars of leisure history have pointed out.