THE LITURGICAL SEASON OF LENT

     

  Well as of last week, Ash Wednesday, marked the beginning of the liturgical season of Lent.  Lent has a great deal to do with food as do the days just prior to it. Lent being a time of abstinence, a time to practice moderation, simplicity, and sacrifice, as a personal observance‚ is set aside to prepare one’s self for the coming Easter season. And the days before have as time has gone on became a series of feasts celebrated in anticipation of the coming of Lent, and its coming practices of temperance. Partly because it would be a little while before some foods could be enjoyed again, cultures and people took to feasting just before the fasting when lent begins, and also to get rid of, use up, any of the prohibited foods they might have had  as a temptation.

     

     The biggest prohibitions during lent were meats and products from any warm blooded animal, so this would also include fat/oils, eggs, and dairy. As well there were traditions where one meal after sunset was all that was eaten, or one meal after noon time and just a snack for supper. As the Church grew and covered a more and more area, different cultural regions and people, different practices were brought in by the local churches.  Some places even called for fasting and abstinence from fruits and vegetables. This left fish to be eaten. And grain products, like bread or porridges. And some, well many places abstained from alcohol.

 

     In actuality most of the prohibitions were of foods that in medieval and feudal times were not very plentiful anyway. Meat stores of preserved, cured smoked meats were about gone, as were winter veggies, certainly fruits, and eggs from last year. New meats were not found much as animals were not big enough for butchering, and hunting was not productive as animals were not found out much in late winter, excepting possibly small animals for snaring. Fish was found under ice and in melting streams. And the only thing that was plentiful was milk products as animals had bared young and were “in milk”. For this reason churches would give a dispensation for dairy products. For a donation you would be allowed to eat dairy. Rouen Cathedral in France has a structure known as Butter tower, supposedly paid for by all the donations for dairy in Lenten seasons. In later times abstinence was only done on Fridays and the one meal for the day was only done on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. 

La Tour Du Beurre, The Butter Tower

     Lent is considered a forty day observance from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday, the day before Easter Sunday. The forty days excluded Sundays, and any feast days (commemorating saints and such) that fell during lent. An example being in Ireland, St. Patrick’s Day would be a feast day so they would have kept back some corned (preserved) beef and cabbage, as a treat. The forty days is said to commemorate the 40 days Christ went off into the desert alone to prepare for his ministry. But in truth even before Jesus’s time in the Jewish, as well as other cultures, traditions a period of 40 days was set as a penitent amount of time for anyone needing to take time out to renew themselves and cleanse themselves in spiritual practice. and ashes were a symbol of the penitent from the time of Moses.

     Under Mosaic law, If someone had done a great wrong they were to dwell in the last camp the group had lived at, in the ashes of their fires left behind and eat scraps left or thrown to them. These being nomadic peoples and constantly on the move for their animals to graze, the penitent would follow behind the group, dwelling in the ashes of the old camps for 40 days or until the leaders determined it was sufficient time for their sin to be cleansed from them. This was based on the symbolic nature of what the number 40 meant. The number 40 was significant in ancient numerology. It is the number 4 which is foundation, like four corner stones to a building, times 10 which was fruition, which was something realized. The 40 years in the wilderness and 40 days in the desert, are using a numerology known to the biblical writers and the culture at the time, to convey a certain meaning. What it meant can best be said as “the time it takes”. It’s the amount of time it takes for something with a good foundation to become realized, not literally 40 days. It’s the time it took for a penitent’s sin to be cleansed from them. The time it took for a nomadic peoples roaming and living in the dessert without aim or purpose to feel that they were unified into a one nation deserving of a permanent home, is the 40 years in the wilderness. The time it took for Jesus the Christ to fully realize his own Divinity, and his mission of bringing the good news of Gods unconditional love to humankind, is the 40 days into the dessert, though truthfully, Jesus may have selected 40 actual days being it was a penitent period under Judaic law.

    And so we now have lent, which was brought in by the Christian church fairly early on as a forty day penitent time before Easter. Christians in various parts of Europe had begun practices of fasting and abstinence before Easter as early as the second century and by the fifth century the Church in most places had set the 40 day time period.  And it not coincidentally mirrored what people were already doing to stretch the failing food stores till the times of harvesting, hunting and butchering new meat and chickens beginning to lay again. And ale and wine from last year’s grains and fruits were about gone. As I mentioned in the previous article about Feb 2,  this was already a time of purification and spring cleaning. Lent comes from a Germanic word for spring, and is also root to the word length as it meant the lengthening days of spring. Other names for lent are the Latin Quadragesim, meaning 40 days, or in France, Careme, in Italy Quaresima, or Spain Cuaresma, all to do with 40.

          Lent comes very late this year as it has to do with the date of Easter, which is also late this year. The date of Easter was a controversy in the early church, as to weather it should be with the Jewish Passover which could fall on any day of the week, or that it had to be on a Sunday as was the apostolic tradition of each week celebrating the Resurrection, and Last supper, on Sunday after the Saturday which was the Sabbath, and scripture reading day. They decided on the Sunday after Passover but came up with a formula to give forth to countries in out reaching areas to determine the day. Unfortunately those countries of Ireland and Britain took the formulas but they had a different calendar which messed up the day. Still it is determined with a silly formula I won’t bother with because it arrives at the same point as if you just say it’s the first Sunday… after the first full moon… after the spring equinox. Because of the Jewish lunar calendar that full moon is Passover. And it’s Passover that Jesus and the apostles were celebrating for the last supper. And Passover has its own food traditions in the Seder meal.

   In anticipation of the coming of lent, and the prohibited foods, were there was more abundance, celebrations grew around feasting and using up the meats and products from warm blooded animals before lent began. Cooking fat and oils, bacon and eggs, pancakes, ham, smoked sausages, butter, and aged cheeses, cabbages and potatoes, and carrots and onions, have all grown into feasts and traditional foods for this time. The Tuesday just before has become Carnival, Mardi Gras, and Shrove Tuesday.

     The word Carnival comes from the Old Latin carnis -meat… (such as carnivorous and carnage) and later Latin words, vale-farewell to, or levare-to remove. It began as the “meat-eating” festival celebrated in Europe and Latin cultures, and now all the way down to south and Latin America, it is still what the various celebrations in Europe and around the world are collectively titled. It has become a grand time of parades and parties. Food varies from Italian large roasted meats, to Cheese Sunday, in Greece where the celebration is called Apokries, or “good bye to meat,” To meat pies in Latin Americas, and even the Pepper pot in the Caribbean, which is a multi-pepper and multi-meat stew. 

     

     

   Mardi Gras means Fat Tuesday in French. Celebrated in Louisiana, USA, by the French there, and in the south originally, it has become a day celebrated through out the rest of the country as well. But the parades and festivals the two weeks and more prior are still a Louisiana tradition. Food is a big part of it, as well as alcohol, like Milk Punch which is cream and bourbon with sugar and spices in it. Cajun/Creole cuisine has become the fare because of where this celebration began. But along with good eating and drinking, parties, dress balls, and parades are also part of the fun. Kings cake, with a pecan, bean, baby Jesus figure, or prize is eaten by some groups from the liturgical time starting with Epiphany to the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. Who ever gets the pecan in their piece of cake, makes the cake, and hosts the  next get together, and the last person to get the pecan on the last cake is the Mardi Gras King. The same tradition of a King’s cake with a bean, or nut or prize in it, is done in various forms and called various names referring to a king, throughout Europe and Latin America. Alms for the poor, canned goods etcetera, to give at the church on Ash Wednesday, are also collected throughout this time, by the local Catholic people who know this holiday is about the coming of lent. Similar observed feasts are celebrated in France and Europe especially where the countries are heavily populated by Catholic citizens.

    Shrove Tuesday celebrated in other areas, more among non-Catholics, is confession Tuesday. To shrive is to confess. But that is also the day to use up the eggs, milk, dairy, and fat not allowed during lent in the form of making pancakes. Folks would go to confession to clear their conscience before lent then have a pancake supper, possibly with bacon or sausage, two other items to be forbade soon.

     

           And so goes the food traditions of  both lent and the days before, and once again it is seasonal to the year. Passover is based on the moon and the spring equinox, Easter is based on Passover. Lent is based on Easter, and such feasting eating days of Carnival, Mardi Gras, and Shrove Tuesday are based on Lent. And all have food factored into them and their celebration and commemoration, even the spirituality. Till later then, I bid adieu. .      

Blessings mes amis.