In its Amarcord section, the Regional Directorate of Cultural Heritage of Shkodra published an old photo from the celebration of carnivals by the Christian community in this city.
The city that celebrated Carnival earlier is Shkodra. The first celebrations belong to the second half of the 19th century, precisely in 1860, creating a solid tradition that continued until 1946, when due to the communist regime, it was prohibited from being celebrated, to return again as a tradition after the 1990s.
Although believed to have pagan origins, in Western Christian civilization, the Carnival festival is known as a religious holiday. Its name itself, in Latin, implies abstaining from eating meat (carnem-levamen or levare) for the 40 days preceding Easter. For this reason, there is no specific date for the start of the festivities as it varies from year to year, according to Easter.
Carnivals are also known for satirizing undesirable social phenomena, and on the other hand, Shkodra has the primacy of intellectual humor, sharp and witty. This is one of the reasons why Carnivals for the people of Shkodra are known as the “festival of the squint-eyed” which have found a suitable ground to take root and flourish in this city, where they are celebrated more beautifully than anywhere else.
