Dear LPG,

I read SA’s post which appeared earlier this month (►►►) and the Ash Wednesday bit got me thinking.  I have always known that it was traditional to give something up for Lent, and not just something that you don’t like or that you are quite happy to do without for a month or two. I have no doubt that I was not the only child of the 1950s for whom giving something up was expected.   As children, we always tried to choose something that we hated anyway, but my Mum usually saw right through my brother and me. It is not something that many of us do these days but, I live with my Mum again now and so her habit of giving up meat for the season has become part of our tradition. 

Regardless of the reason, I think that giving something up for a while is a good discipline although when you are in as far as you can get it is so tempting to give up giving up.  So ,I thought it would be a good idea to remind readers who are getting withdrawal symptoms from whatever they have decided to give up, that they are now officially halfway there.

With not a lot to do earlier today, I decided that I should take a look at the dates and work out when the halfway point was, but did you know that the Saturday before Easter Sunday, the day that we can all give up giving up whatever it is we decided to give up in the first place, is technically 46 days after Ash Wednesday? This is a bit of a swizz as far as I can see, because the whole idea is to aspire us to follow Jesus who was tempted for 40 days, so I took a look on the internet.

Google knows all and explains that, apparently Sundays are not included because they were always feast days, or fasting days depending on how you look at it, so we are expected to work through those too. 

Ultimately we have all had no choice but to give up quite a lot for the past year; hugs, going out without a mask on, going out at all, meeting friends, entertaining and I could go on.  

But if you have given up something this year I want to remind you that you have got halfway through, so it’s all downhill from here…

EB, Lee

EB tells us that there are many different explanations but this is one of the easiest to understand…

(►►►)