Brazil’s Carnival, Pre-Lenten Celebrations Have Ancient Roots : Lifestyle: Many scholars trace similar festivities around the world to the Roman Lupercalia, a festival to welcome spring that evolved into a period of debauchery, circuses and gladiatorial contests.

For weeks, Jaime Abreu and his family have spent every waking moment of their spare time getting ready for Carnival.

Scattered about the stucco patio behind their house are swatches of glittering costume materials and half-made plywood cutouts of black cats and evil eyes.

All the Abreus’ preparations will come together by this Thursday, the day their town’s six-day pre-Lenten festivities begin.

Abreu, a quiet, gray-haired music teacher, is president of the Serrote (Handsaw) samba school in Tres Pontas, a city of 60,000 in the inland Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. Serrote’s Carnival theme this year is superstitions.

Abreu adores the revelry of Carnival. “It’s a question of passion,” he said. “I started with this group 30 years ago. I think about Carnival for the whole year.”

So, under different names, do millions of other people around the world. Many places link the celebration to the approach of Easter. Others indulge in a round of merrymaking to welcome spring.

Rio de Janeiro’s splashy, exuberant Carnival--Carnaval in Portuguese--is the largest and most renowned in Brazil. This and smaller celebrations bring the entire nation of 160 million to a virtual standstill for three or more days every year.

Carnival’s best-known American counterpart is Mardi Gras (“Fat Tuesday” in English), with its masked balls and parades. Brought to New Orleans by French and Spanish settlers, the flamboyant festival is an inseparable part of the city’s character.

Maslenitsa, the Russian celebration, is a farewell to winter. Celebrants sing and dance, compete in toboggan and ski races and eat blini, a traditional pancake.

Cologne and other German cities celebrate Fasching with masquerades, street theater, satirical puppets and enormous parades.

On Trinidad and other Caribbean islands, the festivities feature costumed street dancers who represent the light and dark sides of humanity, with strong sexual overtones.

In Luanda, Angola, troupes from competing neighborhoods parade before cheering crowds to decide which has the most elaborate costumes and the mightiest king.

The roots of all these observances date back thousands of years to celebrations of fertility and the change of seasons.

Many scholars attribute them to the Roman Lupercalia, a festival to welcome spring that evolved into a period of debauchery, circuses and gladiatorial contests.

Lupercalia was denounced by early Christians as sinful, but founders of the church had a difficult time eradicating the tradition. So they compromised, transforming many pagan customs and rituals into festivals and scheduling them just before Lent, the 40-day period of fasting and solemnity that precedes Easter.

“It’s a tradition,” Jaime Abreu said of Tres Pontas’ family-oriented celebration. “Carnival for us began small and grew from the roots.”

As he has done every year since 1964, this year Abreu will command the large percussion section of Serrote, one of the city’s four samba schools. When he started, the group had 25 members. Now it has 500, including six of Abreu’s children and nine of his grandchildren.

In all Brazilian towns and cities that hold Carnivals, the anticipation begins shortly after the new year and builds toward the week of frenzied, drum-beating celebration when revelers fill the streets, dancing the samba in elaborate costumes.

Rio does it on such a vast scale that Carnival there is a year-round industry.

Paulo de Almeida, president of the Independent League of Samba Schools, says that the city’s business income doubles during Carnival. The festival brings Rio more than $200 million annually, according to some estimates.

Once-simple parade groups now have full-time staffs of accountants, designers, press agents, artistic directors and construction crews.

Rio’s 51 samba schools spend an average of $500,000 a year each in Carnival expenses. Leading schools spend twice that.

More than 50,000 samba school musicians and dancers perform before 400,000 spectators in Rio’s Sambadrome, a stadium-like avenue designed for the annual parades.

An average of 200,000 people a night take part in formal and informal parades, parties and costume balls throughout the city.

Since September, Rio’s samba schools have been holding weekly practices for their dancers and musicians.

Maria Rita de Araujo Conrado, chief seamstress for one of the schools, oversees the production of 4,000 costumes, some of them worth more than $250. Many poor participants must take a second job to pay for their costumes.

“I hate Carnival, but I love the brilliance of the parades,” the seamstress said.

Carnival in Rio hasn’t always been so big. For centuries, the celebration was religious, consisting of small processions of common people.

In the 19th Century, the masquerade balls and fancy dress of European society attracted the city’s elite. The first samba school was organized in a Rio slum in 1928. Carnival began to take its present elaborate form in the 1930s.

Dr. Hiram Araujo, a retired physician and a Carnival historian in Rio, has watched it grow in a city as notable for its crime and poverty as for its Carnival.

“It’s a liberation from the daily life of the poor,” he said, “an elevation of their lives.”