*Olinda celebrates Fat Tuesday as last day of carnival *Olinda welcomes meeting of the giant puppets for Fat Tuesday *“Midnight Man” giant puppets are the center of celebrations *Hundreds of thousands in Recife continue to celebrate carnival until the very end
00:00 Tuesday is the last day of carnival in Brazil and our reporter Brian Meir is in the streets of Olinda where the party refuses to die down.
00:08 For those who celebrate carnival around the world, today is called Fat Tuesday.
00:14 It's the last day before Ash Wednesday, which in the Catholic tradition marks the beginning of Lent,
00:19 when people have to give up something they love for a period of 40 days until the Easter holiday arrives.
00:25 So it marks the final day of carnival and here in Olinda, the sister city of Recife Pernambuco,
00:31 which was founded in the 1500s and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, this only means one thing, the meeting of the giant puppets.
00:39 Giant puppets are a tradition in Olinda's carnival going back over a hundred years.
00:45 They can represent different politicians or celebrities.
00:49 They even have a giant puppet of John Travolta, but some of them have religious significance.
00:54 And the most famous of them all is Midnight Man.
00:58 First created in 1932 by two plumbers, a cobbler and a house painter, Midnight Man represents a calunga,
01:06 which is a kind of spirit in the Candomblé Afro-Brazilian religious tradition.
01:12 In Olinda and Recife has almost a cult-like following and when this puppet comes out on the streets today, people are going to go crazy.
01:19 So as the last day of carnival begins, millions of people across Brazil, hundreds of thousands of people here in Recife and Olinda can't get enough of it.
01:28 They're coming out on the streets. They're going to celebrate like there's no tomorrow.
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