Editing Guadeloupe (section)

=== Festivities ===
At Christmas, families and friends gather during the chanté Nwel, an opportunity to sing [[Carol (music)|carols]] and celebrate. After the [[vacation]]s, rehearsals begin for the Guadeloupe carnival. Carnival groups parade through the streets every Sunday afternoon until the Carnival festivities in February or March. For example, the groups with skins, the Akiyo group are groups composed only of large percussion and lambi shell instruments. They have the particularity of having no brass instruments in the band, no choreography, they often parade without themed costumes. Since 2014, the Carnival in kabwèt of Marie-Galante has been registered in the inventory of the [[Intangible cultural heritage|intangible heritage]] of France at [[UNESCO]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Fiches d'inventaire – Patrimoine Culturel Immatériel en France |url=https://www.pci-lab.fr/en/?option=com_fichesinventaire&view=fiche&Itemid=389&id=64 |access-date=23 July 2021 |website=pci-lab.fr |archive-date=14 June 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210614210928/https://www.pci-lab.fr/en/?option=com_fichesinventaire&view=fiche&Itemid=389&id=64 |url-status=live}}</ref>

Shrove Tuesday is the big party where carnival groups compete in the main town, [[Basse-Terre]], or in Pointe-à-Pitre, for the best costumes, the best music or the best choreography whose theme is imposed by the carnival committees. The next day, on Ash Wednesday, the day that ends the carnival, the mascot king of the carnival nicknamed Vaval is burned, which signals the end of the festivities, everyone parades in black and white (to mark Vaval's mourning), and then the forty days of Lent begin. Most of the population is [[Catholic Church|Catholic]] and respects this period. But, given the great fondness for festivities, on the "Thursday of Lent" a parade is organized in red and black identical to that of Carnival, with groups of musicians preceded by people parading.

After this period of deprivation, the Easter celebrations take place, during which families usually go camping on the beach and eat traditional and very popular dishes based on crabs: matété (rice cooked with crab), calalou (crabs with wooden leaves accompanied by white rice) or dombrés with crabs (small balls of flour cooked with crab).