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Published On: Thu, May 3rd, 2018

SCDF announces dates for Carnival 50th anniversary

SCDF Save the Dates Carnival 2019

~ Two month celebration being planned ~

The St.  Maarten Carnival Development Foundation (SCDF) on Wednesday announced April 22, 2019, to May 6, 2019, as the dates for the 50th anniversary of St. Maarten Carnival. “We are going to go all out for Carnival’s golden anniversary. It will be a celebration to remember,” SCDF President Alston Lourens said, adding that the Saves The Dates campaign is underway via social media.

The official part of Carnival 2019 (when Carnival Village opens and closes) spans two weeks, exactly 14 days. The pre-Carnival events, the SCDF explained, will start mid-March and run until the Village opens. “In other words, we will have almost two months of Carnival 50 activities and then some,” Lourens said.

In selecting the dates, and eventually constructing the schedule, the SCDF had to consider how Easter falls on the calendar. More specifically, how the holy week of Lent (the week of Good Friday) fell on the calendar.

By tradition, the Carnival foundation does not host any events during holy week and has always hosted Carnival after Easter. Easter 2019 is on April 21. Carnival 2019 will open on Easter Monday, April 22. “With Easter falling late, that also meant the school vacation would also run a little later into May. That gave us the space to give the public 14 days of Carnival,” Lourens said.

“We would like to see the involvement of all stakeholders, past and present, in their own ways or with the SCDF for Carnival 50. This is a once-in-a-lifetime event and we intend to involve as many people as possible to make it an epic anniversary celebration. The foundation will start planning immediately,” he said.

Lourens added that a special logo for Carnival 50 will be selected from a number of submissions and will be launched publicly soon. The foundation will also release the complete schedule of events by the end of June or before.