Carnival includes wearing masks and the grand fiesta begins today in Chapala. This  annual festival has an interesting genesis!  Soon the streets around all the villages in Mexico will swarm with visitors from around the globe! For 15 days the music will drown our treasured silence. This world-wide festival keeps artists busy making costumes, floats and elaborate masks. The motive for the earliest mask wearing was in Venice, Italy. One scholar tells us that people were thrilled to legally cover their face as they entered society as an equal. Any citizen could stroll through town and not be rejected because of their position, or class. Christian maidens, factory workers, sailors, tradesmen were given the right to mingle without being judged. Extreme festooning went into costume designing. No expense was spared by those who were held back because of not being born into royalty. Fine fabrics, beads,feathers and much color adorned who pray tell? Hiding ones identity gave way to a freedom for one month per year. The Carnival ends with the Catholic celebration of Lent, forty days before Easter. The artistic costumes are brilliant, but today Christians are blessed to walk about unmasked with our identity secured in Christ Jesus, the King of kings. The secret of who we are “in Him” must not be hidden. We must choose to unmask ourselves and shine bright! I am That Girl