Lent

• 1. Introduction

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  Lent, the Christian season of repentance before Easter, once came with a famous loophole involving beavers. The medieval writer Giraldus Cambrensis reported that in Germany and the arctic regions, devout people ate beaver tail as if it were fish. Its taste and colour seemed close enough to fish to pass. The animal was very abundant in Wales at the time. That odd dispensation only makes sense against the severity Lent once demanded, when meat, dairy and eggs were all forbidden. Today the season is kept by Catholics, Lutherans, Moravians, Anglicans, Orthodox Christians and many others. Yet these traditions count it, name it and practise it in strikingly different ways. Why is it forty days when the calendars disagree about where those days begin and end? Who first made the fast an obligation? Why did some Reformers reject it outright? And how did a solemn season end up surrounded by pancakes, sweet buns and some of the most famous carnivals in the world?

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• 2. Words for Lent

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  The English word Lent began as lencten, an Old English term for the spring season. Dutch still uses a close cousin of that word to mean spring, and an old German term, Lenz, is related too. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests the name may point to the lengthening of the days as winter gives way. The origin of the ending is less certain. It may be a simple suffix, or lencten may once have combined the Germanic word for long with a rare word meaning day.

  Greek speakers took a different route. The modern Greek Sarakostí descends from Tessarakostí, meaning fortieth, and the Latin word quadragesima carries the same meaning. From that Latin root come French carême, Italian quaresima, Spanish cuaresma, Portuguese quaresma and Romanian păresimi. The root also travelled much further. It appears in Swahili as kwaresima and in Filipino as kuwaresma. Irish and Scottish Gaelic carghas, Basque garizuma and Welsh crawys or carawys belong to the same family.

  Many languages skip the number and name the activity instead. German calls the season Fastenzeit and Czech calls it postní doba, both meaning a fasting period. Arabic, Syriac, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian and Hungarian all call it the Great Fast, as in Polish wielki post. Romanian keeps both options, with the Latin-based păresimi sitting beside postul mare. Dutch offers three choices: vastentijd, veertigdagentijd and quadragesima.

  In India the name is Charam Chalisa, which means climax forty. Maltese holds the most curious case. The language descends from Arabic, yet it uses the distinctive word Randan for this season. That term has stayed unchanged since the Arab occupation of Malta, despite centuries of Catholic influence.

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• 3. Why Forty

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  Moses spent forty days and forty nights on a mountain, praying and fasting without bread or water, before he received the Ten Commandments. The prophet Elijah likewise fasted and prayed for forty days and nights, until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God, where the word of the Lord came to him. In the New Testament, Jesus went into the desert for forty days and nights, and Satan tried to tempt him there. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke record this episode, which came before his public ministry began. In Christian tradition, each of these fasts prepared its keeper for the work ahead.

  Maximus of Turin, an early Christian bishop, read Elijah's fast as a pattern for believers. He wrote that Elijah, by fasting forty days and nights, earned the right to end a long and severe drought with a stream of rain. Christians who fast for forty days, he argued, might earn the spiritual rain of baptism. That rain would water the dry earth of the whole world and the long drought of the Gentiles.

  The flood of Noah brought forty days and nights of rain. The Hebrew people wandered forty years in the desert on the way to the Promised Land. Jonah's warning gave the city of Nineveh forty days to repent or be destroyed. In the Gospel account, Jesus answered each of Satan's three temptations by quoting scripture, after which the devil left and angels ministered to him.

  The early Church also counted forty hours. A traditional belief holds that Jesus lay forty hours in the tomb, which led to forty hours of total fasting before the Easter celebration. Believers who hold this view read the phrase three days in the tomb as spanning Friday afternoon to early Sunday morning, rather than three full days. Others disagree. The Way International, the Logos Apostolic Church of God and the Anglican scholar E. W. Bullinger, in The Companion Bible, hold that Christ was in the grave for 72 hours, mirroring Jonah in the belly of the whale. How the forty-day pattern turned from example into obligation is a story told in fourth-century letters and church councils.

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• 4. Councils and Converts

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  In AD 339, Athanasius of Alexandria wrote that the forty-day Lenten fast was one that "the entire world" observed. Saint Augustine of Hippo, who lived from AD 354 to 430, was blunter. He wrote: "Our fast at any other time is voluntary; but during Lent, we sin if we do not fast." John Chrysostom, who lived from 347 to 407, said the early Christians ate no meat for the whole season. The Apostolic Constitutions allowed an evening meal of "bread, vegetables, salt and water" and forbade flesh and wine. The Canons of Hippolytus went further for Holy Week, authorizing only bread and salt.

  Where the forty days came from is still debated, and three theories prevail. One says Lent was created at the Council of Nicea in 325, with no earlier form. A second ties it to an Egyptian Christian fast that followed the theophany. A third holds that several origins were blended together around the time of Nicea. Earlier texts do mention fasting before baptism. The Didache, a Christian text from the 1st or 2nd century, urges the baptizer, the person being baptized and any others who are able to fast beforehand.

  For centuries baptisms were commonly held at Easter, so those early references were once read as proof of a pre-Easter fast. Tertullian, in his 3rd-century work On Baptism, called Easter a "most solemn day for baptism." Yet he was one of only a handful of writers before Nicea to say so, and even he admitted that Easter was not the only favoured day where he lived. Since the 20th century, scholars have accepted that Easter was not the standard baptism day in the early church. Shorter fasts did exist before Nicea, and Athanasius noted that the Alexandrian church of the 4th century fasted before Pascha. Still, the forty-day period was clarified at the Nicene Council. In 363-64, the Council of Laodicea prescribed the Lenten fast as "of strict necessity."

  A dispute over timing split the early Church as well. Quartodeciman Christians ended their fast on the Paschal full moon of the Hebrew calendar, so that they could celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread beginning on the 14th of Nisan. For this practice they were excommunicated in the Easter controversy of the 2nd century AD.

  Converts shaped the fast too. Candidates for baptism followed a catechumenate, a period of instruction and discipline that sometimes lasted up to three years. Near the close of the 4th century in Jerusalem, classes ran for three hours each day throughout Lent. The fast began as the catechumens' own preparation for baptism. It was later extended from Good Friday to a six-day period matching six weeks of final instruction. Then the Edict of Milan legalized Christianity, and it later became the state religion of the Roman Empire. The flood of new members threatened its character. In response, the Lenten fast and self-renunciation became annual requirements for all Christians, in solidarity with the catechumens and for their own spiritual benefit. Churches that inherited the obligation would count its days in very different ways.

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• 5. Counting the Days

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  Since 1970, the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church has run Lent from Ash Wednesday to the evening of Holy Thursday, a stretch of 44 days. Fasting obligations carry on through Good Friday and Holy Saturday, which brings the fasting days to forty. Fasting practices then continue until the Easter Vigil. The Ambrosian Rite begins on the Sunday after Ash Wednesday, with the fast starting on the Monday and the special Ash Wednesday fast moved to the first Friday. Until Saint Charles Borromeo revised this rite, the first Sunday was festive, with white vestments and the chanting of the Gloria and Alleluia. That followed the advice in Matthew 6:16: "When you fast, do not look gloomy."

  Protestant and Western Orthodox churches run the season from Ash Wednesday to the evening of Holy Saturday. Counting the six Sundays gives 46 days, and leaving them out gives forty. Sundays are the Lord's Day, so they are not fasting days, though meat abstinence was historically urged on them too. The Moravian, Lutheran, Anglican and Methodist churches follow this scheme. So do Western Rite Orthodox churches, United Protestant churches and the Reformed churches that observe Lent.

  In the Byzantine Rite, Great Lent lasts forty days including Sundays. It begins on Clean Monday and ends on Lazarus Saturday, just before Holy Week. Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday are treated as distinct fasting periods that follow it. Great Lent is not broken until after the Paschal Divine Liturgy. In Eastern Orthodox circles the season is called bright sadness, and it is the most important fasting season of the church year.

  The Coptic, Ethiopian and Eritrean churches, which use the Alexandrian Rite, keep eight continuous weeks of fasting. It falls into three consecutive parts: a pre-Lenten fast, Great Lent itself and the Paschal fast of Holy Week. Easter for these churches is typically reckoned by the Julian calendar, which usually places it later than Easter in the Gregorian calendar used by Catholics and Protestants.

  Ethiopian Orthodoxy stretches the fast to 55 continuous days before Easter, which is called Fasika. Tsome Hirkal is the eight-day Fast of Heraclius, recalling a fast requested by the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius. He reputedly made the request before setting out to fight the Sassanian Empire and recover the True Cross, which had been seized from Jerusalem. Tsome Arba is the forty days of Lent, and Tsome Himamat is seven days for Holy Week. Devotees give up animal products, and they neither eat nor drink anything before 3:00 pm.

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• 6. At the Lenten Table

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  Before the 6th century, the normal way to keep Lent was the Black Fast. An observant person took no food or drink all day, then ate a single vegetarian supper after sunset. The Coptic Orthodox Church still keeps this form. In India and Pakistan, many Christians fast until sunset on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and many keep the practice all season.

  Communal suppers grew around that rhythm. After a worship service, often on a Wednesday or Friday evening, Christians may end the day's fast together in a church parish hall. At home, a family or an individual concludes the day with a mealtime prayer. Some Catholics and Methodists take on the Daniel Fast, which gives up meat, fish, eggs, dairy products, chocolates, ice cream, sugar, sweets and alcohol.

  Three traditional practices are known as the pillars of Lent: prayer, fasting and almsgiving. They are described as justice toward God, toward self and toward neighbours. The money saved by giving up a luxury is donated at church to help the poor. Many Christians also choose a personal Lenten sacrifice, such as vegetarianism or teetotalism, and wish each other well with the words "May God bless your Lenten sacrifice."

  Rules about animal foods shifted over time. Until 1741, meat and dairy were forbidden for the whole season, Sundays included. In that year Pope Benedict XIV allowed them on certain fasting days. Earlier, a decree of Pope Alexander VI had let penitents in Spain and its colonised territories eat dairy. Alcohol was avoided in remembrance of the Sacred Thirst of Our Lord on the Cross.

  Dispensations also followed the climate and the cook. Saint Thomas Aquinas allowed sweetened foods during Lent. He regarded sugared spices such as comfits as digestive aids on par with medicine rather than food.

  Fasting in Western societies is considerably relaxed today. In the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Eastern Catholic and Eastern Lutheran churches, abstinence from all animal products is still commonly practised. That includes eggs, fish, fowl and milk, so only vegetarian or vegan meals are eaten. Ethiopian Orthodox practice demands a much longer fast, and there is some dispute over whether fish is allowed. In the West, abstinence is distinguished from fasting. Meat is generally avoided but not dairy or fish, on Ash Wednesday and on Fridays that are not solemnities. Each country's bishops can decide the form it takes.

  The Coptic Orthodox Church teaches that believers should refrain from physical relations during Lent to make time for fasting and prayer. The Eastern Orthodox Church enjoins the same abstinence. In the medieval West, Christians abstained for the whole season, and nine months after Lent, birth records were drastically low. Researchers from the University of Valencia and the University of Alcalà report that in Spain the custom was widely practised until the end of the Franco régime.

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• 7. Rules Rewritten and Rejected

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  Before 1966, a Catholic of fasting age could eat only one full meal a day throughout Lent, generally at noon, with the Lord's Day excepted. A small evening meal called a collation, introduced after the 14th century, was allowed. So was a morning cup of tea, coffee or diluted chocolate with a bite of bread or a cracker. Milk and broth counted as food, but soda, beer and wine did not. The 1917 Code of Canon Law let the full meal fall at any hour, with two collations and quantities set by local custom. Only those aged 21 to 59 were obliged to fast, and illness or strenuous work excused them. The fast ended at noon on Holy Saturday. Portions were to be "sufficient to sustain strength, but not sufficient to satisfy hunger."

  In 1966, Pope Paul VI cut the obligatory fasting days from all forty to Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, in his apostolic constitution Paenitemini. Abstinence was limited to Fridays and Ash Wednesday, and bishops' conferences could replace both with charity and piety. Fasting on all forty days stayed strongly recommended, but not under pain of mortal sin. The change let people in countries with a lower standard of living replace fasting with prayer. Where economic well-being was greater, the witness of asceticism mattered all the more. The 1983 Code of Canon Law made fasting obligatory for those aged 18 to 59 and abstinence obligatory from age 14.

  Local bishops then chose their own paths. The Irish bishops allowed other forms of Friday penance, suggesting giving up another food, alcohol or smoking, family prayer, Mass, the Stations of the Cross, or helping the poor, sick, old or lonely. The bishops of England and Wales ruled similarly in 1985 but in 2011 restored year-round Friday abstinence from meat. The United States bishops kept Friday abstinence during Lent only, counting poultry as meat but not fish or shellfish.

  Even Lent bends around feast days. Friday abstinence lapses on 19 and the 25th of March, when the solemnities of Saint Joseph and the Annunciation are usually celebrated, and on Saint Patrick's Day in Ireland. In Hong Kong, Ash Wednesday often coincides with Chinese New Year. A dispensation from fast and abstinence is then granted, and the faithful are urged to choose another penance.

  Lutherans kept the fast after the Reformation. Lutheran church orders of the 16th century retained it, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America published A Handbook for the Discipline of Lent. It advises one simple meal on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, fish in place of meat on Fridays, and giving up a food or a favourite activity for the season. It warns against giving up something a doctor already requires. The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod encourages sacrifice without requiring it, stressing that repentance from sin is the point. Members of the Moravian Church also fast by choice.

  John Calvin took the opposite view. In his Institutes of the Christian Religion he called Lent a "superstitious observance." He noted that Christ fasted once, preparing to announce the gospel, and not repeatedly. Samuel Rutherford likewise rejected any obligation. The Directory for Public Worship, produced by the Westminster Assembly in 1644 and approved by the Scottish Parliament in 1645, held that no day but the Lord's day is commanded as holy under the gospel. Reformed churches therefore did not historically observe Lent. Some do today, such as the Reformed Church in America, which urges members to observe a Holy Lent through self-examination, prayer and works of love.

  The Church of England's Book of Common Prayer of 1662 names all Fridays in the year except Christmas Day as fasting days, alongside the forty days of Lent. The Ember Days, Rogation Days and vigils of feasts are listed too. Methodists draw on John Wesley's The Sunday Service, which mandates fasting and meat abstinence on every Friday except Christmas Day. Good Friday is traditionally an important day of communal fasting for them. Rev. Jacqui King of Nu Faith Community United Methodist Church in Houston explained the idea this way: "I'm not skipping a meal because in place of that meal I'm actually dining with God."

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• 8. Pancakes and Purple

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  Shrove Tuesday takes its name from shrive, meaning to hear confession and absolve. In the United Kingdom and Canada, the day is tied to pancakes, a way of using up eggs, milk and sugar before the season of plainer eating. Many Catholic and Lutheran churches offer confession that day. Churches also burn the previous year's Palm Sunday palms, gathered in a basket in the narthex, to make the ashes used the next morning on Ash Wednesday.

  Carnival is the last round of excess before the sombre season. Famous examples include the carnivals of Barranquilla, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Venice and Cologne, the New Orleans Mardi Gras, the Rio de Janeiro carnival and the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival. In historically Lutheran nations the pre-Lenten days are called Fastelavn. Congregants eat fastelavnsboller, round sweet buns covered with icing and filled with cream or jam. Children dress up, sing and collect money, then hit a barrel that represents fighting Satan and enjoy the sweets inside. Oriental Orthodox churches take the opposite approach with a pre-Lenten fast. Even so, the Assyrian festival of Hano Qritho prepares a feast of bulgur, meat and eggs before the fasting starts.

  When Lent begins, the churches fall quiet. The Gloria is omitted on the Sundays of Lent, and the Alleluia is dropped entirely from Lutheran, Roman, Anglican and Presbyterian worship. Michael Haydn wrote a Lenten Mass, the Missa tempore Quadragesimae in D minor, without a Gloria, scored only for choir and organ. On Maundy Thursday the Gloria returns with the sound of bells, which then fall silent until the Easter Vigil.

  The look of the church changes too. Flowers leave the chancel, and crosses and statues are veiled in violet, typically from the fifth Sunday of Lent, called Judica or Passion Sunday, until Good Friday. The custom grew from a worry that the faithful would adore crosses ornamented with jewels, the form known as Crux Gemmata. In Ireland before Vatican II, poor rural convents and parishes could not afford purple fabric, so they removed the statues or turned them to face the wall. Veiling is still consistently observed in Goa, Malta, Peru, Barcelona, Málaga and Seville. The Philippines keeps it only for Holy Week. The plaques of the Stations of the Cross are never veiled.

  Clergy wear violet through the season. On the fourth Sunday, called Laetare, rose-coloured vestments may replace it, and the Pope blesses the Golden Rose, a jewel shaped like a rose. In the United Kingdom the same Sunday is Mothering Sunday, which grew from a 16th-century celebration of the Mother Church. Black was once used for Lent, and Pope Innocent III declared it the proper colour, though Durandus of Saint-Pourçain preferred violet. Some Anglican churches wear a Lenten array of sackcloth trimmed with crimson. The sackcloth stands for penance and the crimson edge for the Passion of Christ.

  Holy Week brings the season's most intense days. Wednesday is sometimes called Spy Wednesday, for the bargain Judas Iscariot struck to betray Jesus. Maundy Thursday evening opens the Easter Triduum with a Mass recalling the Last Supper. The consecrated hosts are then carried to a place of reposition, where the faithful keep watch in answer to Jesus' question to his sleeping disciples in Gethsemane: "Could you not watch with me one hour?" The Good Friday commemoration of the Passion takes place at 3 pm, unless work schedules lead to a later hour. The Easter Vigil begins with the blessing of a fire and a special candle, and adults may be baptized. Some churches then hold open-air sunrise services.

  Lent's reach now extends beyond church walls. Some Christians and secular groups read the fast as a positive act that supports environmental stewardship and better health, and even some atheists observe it. In the United Kingdom, BBC Radio Four normally broadcasts a series of 15-minute programmes called the Lent Talks on Wednesdays. In 2025, the #Pray40 event run by the Catholic prayer app Hallow drew more than 1,000,000 people praying together through Lent.

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