Peeve: Lent

So, what are you giving up for Lent? I want to give up poverty.

It's like the day after Thanksgiving, No Buy Day. If you're poor, every day is No Buy Day, unless there are big sales with massive discounts. Let's think of a day of the year that has big sales with massive discounts. Hey, I know, how about the day after Thanksgiving? Thank you Concerned Middle Classes. Enjoy those big screen TVs and X-Boxes you buy the day after the day after Thanksgiving with the extra money you have that we don't.

Lent's like that. When the churches that push giving up for Lent do without tithes and collections for forty days, I'll believe they know what they're asking of people. It doesn't have to be the same forty days. They could still gouge people during Lent, while backing off during Advent, so folks would have more money for Christmas. And post-Thanksgiving and post-Christmas specials.

Let's see the Pope wear plain clothes and live in a single room at a Motel 6 for 40 days. Then he can tell harried housewives they shouldn't touch that Valentine's Day chocolate.

[Left: Only 12 miles from the Golden Gate Bridge, San Rafael's new Motel 6 is ideally located to serve the needs of the major religious leader during any Advent papal cut-back. Above: Of course, his home-sweet-home will still be there when the 40 days are up.]

You may wonder why I care. "Wes," you may be saying, "we know you don't consider yourself a Christian, so why do you get worked up about Lent?"

This is a good question and I am glad I asked it. The fact is that Christianity is part of my ambient culture whether I like it or not. They even baptized me without my expressed consent!

While I'm at it I can't resist relating the etymology of the word "noon", which I found by reading the Catholic Encyclopedia entry on Lent. The original phrase was Latin nona hora, meaning the ninth hour of daylight by Roman reckoning, meaning 3 PM.

When the church started you were supposed to eat only one meal a day after nightfall. But already by the 5th Century it was acceptable to break the fast at the none hour.

By the 9th Century the "none hour" came to be understood as a duration which began around 2 PM and ended at 3 PM.

[Right: Nobody tells Charlemagne "Big Charles" he can't start breakfast by 2 PM.]

Following that, people simply started their none meal sooner and sooner.

By the 12th century it was common for the word none to refer to noon.

A shift in spelling and pronunciation later, and "noon" means noon.

Ironically, I don't even get up most days until after noon and I take my breakfasts between 3 and 5 PM. My wake up times are post-industrial, depending on the availability of artificial light, but at least during Lent my breakfast times are right in step with the Middle Ages. Cool.

Cultural Dissonance

Easter is my favorite Christian holiday because it makes no sense whatsoever to me, and I do enjoy senselessness, no matter how much I say to the contrary.

The whole death and resurrection story makes no sense whatsoever. If Jesus is God, it's no surprise that He can resurrect Himself. So where's the drama?

Then there's the Easter Bunny business. Who thought up that abomination of nature? A rabbit that lays colored hard boiled eggs with stupid little decals glued to them? Couldn't they at least be soft-boiled? I hate dried out yolks. You know, a little salmonellosis isn't going to kill most of us.

I think I finally figured out why they hide the eggs. The whole business of gorging on eggs at Easter-time isn't a pagan idea at all. It stems from the fact that the Medieval Church prohibited the eating of eggs during Lent. So when Lent was over there was a surplus. Hiding the eggs ritually displaced the blame for the unavailability of eggs from the real culprit, the Church, and dumped it all on the bunny. They were trying to make us hate the bunny and love the Church. But it didn't work. Nobody can hate the bunny. He's a cute bunny, yes he is! YES HE IS A CUTE BUNNY!

But why are the eggs colored? I read that the red ones represent the blood of Jesus and the green ones represent the renewal of plant-life at spring. What do the purple ones represent? Tinky Winky?

In order to convey to my Christian friends exactly how senseless Easter appears to me, I offer this video I found on YouTube which I also don't get, and which I hope will instill within others the same kind of cultural dissonance that I derive from Easter. It's a Bollywood film with Cajun French subtitles added "for educational purposes." I want to know what school uses this material in its courses, and how their graduates are getting on in life.