When I was a kid, I didn’t get it at all
- Scott Daniels: We Ate Well and Cheaply
- February 25, 2022
- 736
Many Christian denominations will begin observing Lent on Wednesday, March 2. It’s mainly observed by Roman Catholic and mainline Protestant liturgical churches, chiefly Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, United Protestant, Presbyterian, Moravian and Eastern Orthodox.
A few others spend the period through April 14 fasting, praying and giving alms as well. Participating believers will get an ashes-and-oil mark of the cross on the forehead on Ash Wednesday, with the solemn reminder we are all dust and to dust we will return. We are asked to be penitent, prayerful, abstinent of excess and to prepare for Easter.
When I was a kid, I didn’t get it at all. “You can’t eat meat now? What the heck is that for?”
Even now, the period of Lent is usually thought of as a time to pick something somewhat dear to “give up” — nothing so serious as swearing off showering, but more like coffee or ice cream.
More properly, it is a time to give up the things in life that stand between you and a strengthened faith, rather than one of forswearing chocolate-chip cookies. It marks the 40 days Jesus is said to have spent fasting in the desert before beginning his own public ministry, and fasting has indeed been a large part of Lent observances since they began in the third or fourth century.
German monks have traditionally brewed a special beer, often called “liquid bread,” in preparation for the liturgical season and subsist only on that. In western churches observers do not eat meat on Ash Wednesday, Good Friday and all Fridays during lent.
On a lighter side, giving up some decadent foods during the season of Lent may kick off a little quiet weight loss before spring. Passing on things like french fries, desserts, fast food, potato chips, soda and alcohol represents a couple thousand calories a day.
Over the course of the 40 days of Lent, you’ll save more than 6,000 calories by just removing Cheez-Its from your snack menu. If you don’t follow any particular religious practice, it can still be a good thing to borrow the concept as a way to begin better habits.
There are certainly few downsides to paying attention to extravagance and waste in your life and to look outside yourself to find ways to help others. Do you really need multiple lattes every weekday? Could that money be better spent helping a friend out of a little cash scrape?
While beef, lamb, pork and chicken are off the Friday menu, fish, eggs, bread, vegetables and cheeses are fine. Technically, to fast doesn’t require no food as though you were preparing for an unpleasant doctor appointment, but rather a single, simple meal each fasting day.
As an adult I’ve had little success with the whole “give up something” business. I can swear to drop fancy coffee from my life and be quite serious and glum about the prospect until I’m stumbling around the kitchen trying to pry my eyes open.
I’ve never found it at all difficult to say “to heck with that” when being a good boy becomes inconvenient or struggly due to an internal, secret promise. I find it easier to think about my own life’s direction, the wrongs I’m accustomed to beating myself up for, the physical burdens I box up and move from house to house, and the unnecessary emotional burdens that wake me from sleep most mornings at 4 a.m.
In this time when many Christians are taking a look at their own relationship to faith and the church and a time when fewer people identify as affiliated with any religion, perhaps the lessons of the Lenten period of sacrifice and reflection can be a useful return to square one when men and women were sorting out society and deciding how to best observe their emerging faith and serve their neighbors. Whether you observe the strictures of Lent or not, its message still works, 2,000 years in.