A Farewell to Meat…
Hey, everyone, it’s Carnival time! And time for me to hang up the wordsmith hat and indulge in a little history of the language…
To most people that word ‘carnival’ will conjure up images of fun fairs, fairground rides, and/or Brazilian dancers in skimpy costumes.
But if you’re more of a history buff it might just remind you of a painting by Pieter Breughel the Younger known as The Battle of Carnival and Lent.
The painting shows Carnival, an extremely chubby figure mounted on a barrel, engaging in a mock tournament with Lent, an extremely emaciated figure mounted on a trolley.
So what’s that about?
Simple. It represents the point in the Church’s year when Catholics (like me) begin a 40-day period of fasting and abstinence – in preparation of course, for the great feast of Easter, celebrating Christ’s passion, death and resurrection. In the 16th century this fast was observed much more strictly than it is today, and no meat at all was eaten for the whole of the 40 days. So – inevitably – people tended to binge eat before the fast began. Because after that they had to say ‘farewell to meat’ – or, in Latin, carne vale.
On Shrove Tuesday (which most people now think of as Pancake Day) they’d use up some of the last remaining bits and pieces in the larder (like sugar, fat and eggs) that would be forbidden in Lent – and make pancakes with them. The name derives from the tradition of shriving oneself (going to Confession) before the fast.
And on Good Friday (the day of Christ’s crucifixion) you would bake and eat – on that day, and that day only - tasty, spicy, hot cross buns. A foretaste of the feast to come on Easter Sunday…
We still talk about carnival (though not much about Lent). We still have pancakes on Shrove Tuesday (though most people have no idea why). And we still bake hot cross buns (though we like them so much we think it’s a great idea to have them all year round).
So?
Fine. It’s a free country, and people can do what they like. But I think all these things tell us something about our society that we need to understand.
We wouldn’t dream of giving up meat, fat, eggs and sugar for 40 days on the trot (except, perhaps, for a fad diet). We wouldn’t dream of restricting a particular food to just one day in the year – especially if we like it. And most of us couldn’t care less where these ideas and traditions have come from, or what they mean.
In other words, we’re just a bit self-indulgent. And greedy. And wasteful. Which is probably why so many of us look disturbingly like Bruegel’s ‘Carnival’.
We’ve forgotten what it means to eat food in due season. We’ve forgotten how fasting, over a measured time, can make the feast that follows twice as enjoyable (as well as helping us not to over-indulge!) We’ve forgotten how to make one day special, and different from all others.
And we’ve forgotten how self-denial can make occasional, justifiable self-indulgence that much more enjoyable – and enjoyable without guilt.
Result? Well, I hesitate to point to certain senior directors who earn obscene multiples of the salaries they’re prepared to pay their recession-hit staff. But I’ll do it anyway – especially when I see those very clever people at Goldman Sachs trying to swing the public poll on the Robin Hood Tax by recording thousands of fake ‘no’ votes.
Until that moment I had severe doubts about it. I still do, but I’ve now voted ‘yes’. Because if they’re really that scared of it, there must be something in it…!
Tomorrow you may notice a cross marked in ash on my forehead. My acknowledgement that I’m a less than perfect human being getting ready for the Lenten fast. Laugh if you want – that’s fine. But when you’ve had your laugh take a couple of minutes to think about why I’m doing it.
If you think you could benefit from dropping a few pounds (and I certainly could) why not fast with me – just to see what it’s like? And if you don’t think there’s much point in that, take a look at the CAFOD website – and see how your self-denial could help someone else.
