Tuesday feasting, Wednesday fasting
A heap of pancakes will be cooked and eaten tonight and two bottles of wine will be drunk. (Note the use of the "cautious passive" there as I may need help in the kitchen). Anyway, then it's forty days and nights without sweet things and alcohol for this blogger. Why the feasting and fasting? Habit, I suppose. I grew up at a time and in a place when Lent was observed more rigorously than it is now. In the rural Ireland of my youth, the three days prior to Ash Wednesday were known as Shrovetide and it was a time of eating, drinking music making and card playing. Then came the fasting, one of those ancient rites in which physical activities were reduced, resulting in a state of quiescence comparable, symbolically, to death. Today, it's much less extreme.
Interesting word that, "Shrove", by the way. It comes from the Roman Catholic practice of confessing one's sins and being absolved of them, or "shriven". The word comes ultimately from the Latin scribere "to write", source of English "scribe" and the meaning evolved via the sense of "to prescribe penances". In Brazil and the United States, today, Shrove Tuesday, is called Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday); in Italy and other southern European countries it is called Carnival (Farewell to Meat), and here in Germany it's Fastnacht (Night of the Fast). There was a very practical aspect to these Shrovetide pre-fast feasts as they were designed to use up the food that could not be eaten during Lent. On Shrove Tuesday (more generally known now as Pancake Day) flour, eggs, milk, and butter were used up in the making of pancakes.
The excesses of Shrove Tuesday are followed by Ash Wednesday, so called from the ceremony of placing ashes on the forehead as a sign of penitence. This custom, probably introduced by Pope Gregory I, has been universal since the Synod of Benevento (1091). In the Catholic Church, ash obtained from burned palm branches of the previous Palm Sunday is blessed and the priest places it on the foreheads of the congregation, while reciting over each person the highly sobering: "Dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return".
Diarist of the day: Earl Mountbatten of Burma, 4 March 1978"[Egypt] I brought a couple of books from Barbara Cartland to give to Mrs Sadat who she understood read her books. However, the President said, 'No, no, I shall read them first, I am a great fan of Barbara Cartland myself.' He then suggested she might come to Egypt and get some background information for writing one of her novels set in Egypt. I said I would pass on the invitation."
