Pre-lenten thoughts.

A few little notes for the beginning of the Lenten season, courtesy of the Old Farmers Almanac! Anyone out there giving up anything for Lent this year? I've been thinking about the season, and how little I actually know about it. It begins with Shrove Tuesday (Fat Tuesday or Mardi Gras), a day to make confession in preparation for lent (and to use up all your milk, eggs, butter and meats, traditionally), and then on to Ash Wednesday.

Also, see here for some unbelievable imagery of this season, this Rose Monday/Mardi Gras/Carnivale time of year.

February 24, also known as Fastnacht (German for “eve of fast”) and Mardi Gras (French for “Fat Tuesday”), is the last day before Lent begins in the Christian calendar.

In the Cajun country of Louisiana, a rich gumbo served over rice is the traditional Mardi Gras feast.

For the Pennsylvania Dutch, Shrove Tuesday means Fastnacht kuche, a special, deep-fried doughnut baked and eaten only on this day. A similar deep-fried cake called oliebollen is eaten in Holland, and jelly-filled buns called paczki are made in Poland.

Maybe the best-known tradition is Shrove Tuesday pancakes, traditionally fried to use up all cooking fats (forbidden during Lent).

Here's another good bit about Ash Wednesday, from this book I've been reading:

Ash Wednesday: The name is taken from the custom of putting ashes on the forehead on this first day of Lent, as a reminder of our need for repentance. the date of Ash Wednesday depends on the date of Easter, because it always falls forty-six days before Easter. The ashes used are the powdered ashes of the burnt palms of the previous year's Palm Sunday.

...all this flourishing life, turns to a little ash, a handful of dry dust, which every breeze scatters this way and that. All this brilliant color, all this sensitive, breathing life, falls into pale, feeble, dead earth, and less than earth, into ashes. It is the same with ourselves. We look into an opened grave and shiver: a few bones, a handful of ash-grey dust.

Remember man
that dust thou art
and unto dust shalt thou return

Ashes signify man's overthrow by time. Our own swift passage, ours and not someone else's, ours, mine. When at the beginning of Lent the priest takes the burn residue of the green branches of the last Palm Sunday and inscribes with it on my forehead the sign of the cross, it is to remind me of my death.

Memento homo
quia pulvis est
et in pulverem reverteris.
Everything turns to ashes, everything whatever.
(Romano Guardini)

So much Sun as shines on Shrove Tuesday, so it shines all Lent.
Well, I hope and pray for sun tomorrow...as it is today. This is a spring I'm quite ready for, allergy season notwithstanding. Bring on the light!