It was a question about Ash Wednesday that made me think of one of my favorite times of the year.

Ash Wednesday marks the end of the Mardi Gras season and the start of Lent, but this isn’t about Lent.

I love Mardi Gras. You can have Christmas with its trees and gifts, you can have Easter and Valentine’s Day with their overabundance of chocolate, and you can have Halloween with its pumpkins and trick-or-treat. For me, nothing beats Mardi Gras.

Growing up in Louisiana and working as a reporter in the Bayou State for a good number of years, I went to a lot of Mardi Gras events, from parades and balls to the Courir de Mardi Gras in Church Point, La. I’ve been to Mardi Gras on the coast and in Magnolia, and to our local celebration. All of these events have their own distinctive characteristics and traits, and all are enjoyable.

Mardi Gras is not just a one-day celebration, but a season that begins the day after Epiphany and runs through Shrove Tuesday the day before Lent. But it’s the final days of parades and events building up to Fat Tuesday that make it special.

Growing up in Baton Rouge, my first exposure to Mardi Gras was New Orleans. As a custom, my family usually went to the parades in New Orleans the Sunday before Fat Tuesday to catch the Krewes of Mid City, Toth, Isis and Bacchus. I caught the first Bacchus parade, which featured Bob Hope as the mythical god of mirth. Isis, an all-woman Krewe, later moved its parade to the suburbs.

At that time, the night parades were spectacles, with men carrying and dancing with flambeau, torch lights, in the parade. The practice was stopped years later, and has slowly made a comeback with some parades.

As I got older, I went to the Mardi Gras Day events, usually with my wife’s family, to see Rex, Zulu and the truck krewes as they made their way down St. Charles Street.

The most unusual Mardi Gras I’ve attended was the Courir de Mardi Gras, or, loosely translated, the Mardi Gras Riders, a group of fairly lubricated Cajuns riding horses through the countryside and performing for ingredients to a community gumbo.

But the days of watching the Courir and Carnival in the Crescent City are long gone, having been replaced by neighborhood and small town parades that were much more family friendly for our daughter and much more sedate.

I was separated from the Mardi Gras customs after moving to Alabama and later east central Mississippi, but I regained the spirit when we moved to the Coast, and for 10 years took a vacation day Mardi Gras Day to catch the parades in Biloxi. They were a joy and a tonic.

Which brings us to our Mardi Gras celebration Feb. 6. I’ve had the pleasure of covering it every year I’ve been here, and it’s one of the things about my job I love doing — sometimes, life can be good.

The parade is festive and family oriented and the gumbo cook off that follows makes the day a perfect celebration. They’re events worth attending and enjoying, so come out, catch beads, sample gumbo and laissez les bon temps rouler!