The Comic Cowboys have a motto, “without malice” that often rings hollow if someone is on the wrong end of their satirical Mardi Gras Day floats that roll through downtown Mobile.

New Orleans and St. Louis, consider this “without malice.”

Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson, on Tuesday, read a proclamation giving New Orleans and St. Louis permission to celebrate Mardi Gras this year.

Why the permission? Because Mobile is “known for having the oldest organized Mardi Gras celebrations in the United States” that began in 1703, well before the founding of the nation in 1776.

“As the mother of Mardi Gras, we felt they should have that permission,” Stimpson said before reading the proclamation during the weekly city council meeting.

The proclamation also reads that the city hosted the first formally organized Mardi Gras parade in the U.S. in 1830. It also says that the parading and celebratory traditions of other cities were “initiated by migrating Mobilians, who spread the majesty of the Carnival season across the region.”

Stimpson then officially granted permission to the cities of New Orleans, St. Louis and “any other revelers, Krewe members, or Mystic Societies” to participate in Mardi Gras this year. Mardi Gras Day is on Feb. 13.

The proclamation has become a tradition for Stimpson, who often reads it during a Mardi Gras tree lightening ceremony at Mardi Gras Park in downtown Mobile. But Stimpson was unable to attend this year’s ceremony, which took place Saturday.

The proclamation is also part of a friendly banter over the popular holiday between New Orleans and Mobile. The most notable dust up occurred in 2018, when Alabama tourism officials paid for 10 billboards in southern Mississippi and Louisiana to troll New Orleans by listing the mileage distance to “America’s Original Mardi Gras” of Mobile.

In 2015, Stimpson had a billboard placed on Interstate 10 in downtown Mobile that advertised the city as the “birthplace” of Mardi Gras, recognizing the 1703 origins for the holiday in Mobile.

Last year, a New Orleans bar in the French Quarter reignited the tussle by posting a picture on Facebook of a sign that said, “Behave or we’ll send you to Mobile for Mardi Gras – Mngmt.”

Stimpson then chimed in by saying that New Orleans residents were invited to attend Mardi Gras in Mobile this year.

Some of the social media comments got salty, with some people calling Mobilians “jealous” while other noted that Mobile was the safer Mardi Gras alternative to New Orleans.

The two cities have long attempted to claim the holiday as their own. While New Orleans officials acknowledged the annual pre-Lenten festival roots to Mobile, they will also point to the Big Easy for making the holiday a worldwide sensation.

St. Louis, meanwhile, claims it hosts the “second-largest” Mardi Gras celebration in the U.S. within its historic Soulard neighborhood south of the city’s downtown and near the famed Anheuser Busch brewery. Only New Orleans, according to St. Louisans, celebrate with a larger festival.

A TV station in St. Louis, however, proclaimed the narrative to be “false,” noting that Pensacola and Mobile draw larger Mardi Gras crowds.