This article examines how ‘carnival’ was used in Britain between the late Victorian and inter-war periods both as a descriptive term for a diverse set of events and occasions, and as a title for originally processional but thereafter increasingly multi-entertainment events held to raise funds for charity. In particular, it explores the connotations of ‘carnival' during this period of ritualisation, against a backdrop of changes in temporal organisation; of revelry, amid shifting attitudes to leisure time and its usage; and of commercialised spectacle, which permeated both private and voluntary sector leisure provision. The article moreover highlights the historic specificity of ‘carnival's’ meaning, and calls for scholars who utilise Bakhtin's model of the carnivalesque to analyse modern cultural forms to instead look for parallels with more contemporaneous ideas of carnival, as well as advocating greater comparative study of diverse leisure formats within particular historical and geographic contexts, in order to draw out shared themes.