Lex Anteinternet: Fat Tuesday

Lex Anteinternet: Fat Tuesday:

Fat Tuesday

Bear guiding.  A Polish Shrove Tuesday tradition.  No, I don't understand it.

Yesterday I marked Clean Monday.

Today is Fat Tuesday, or Mardi Gras.

The day marks the day before Ash Wednesday on the liturgical calendar of the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church.  Like the other major day noted in the United States, setting aside Christmas and Easter, which derives from the Catholic liturgical calendar, St. Patrick's Day, the day is celebrated widely in the US by folks who have no idea whatsoever what it marks.

The day is called "Fat" Tuesday, or Mardi Gras, in French as it marked the day when people in Louisiana, French speaking Catholics, attempted to use up excess fats in their household that would otherwise go to waste during the Lenten season.  The Lenten Fast in the Latin Rite is much less strict than it once was, so this isn't a problem today, but the tradition of having a big pre Lenten celebration remains.  In its original form, it was a major Franco North American celebration, but wasn't the sort of weird event its devolved into, featuring topless women and beads and the like.  Indeed, quite the opposite is true.  It had a religious nature to it.

This is also true in many other predominantly Catholic countries around the globe.  In Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries the day is also widely celebrated, with the use of a term which actually very closely approximates Mardi Gras or the use of the term Carnival, which means "to put away meat", derived from Latin.  Carnival is celebrated in some Catholic European cultures under that name as well, including southern Germany.  Germans also call the day Fastnachtsdienstag, Faschingsdienstag, Karnevaldienstag and Veilschendienstag.  The day is marked by a partial day off from school as well as parades and the observance of some distinctly odd German customs.

In English speaking countries where, outside of Ireland, the Reformation took them out of the Catholic world in the 1500s, the tradition none the less remains, reflecting how strong the Catholic customs were even where Protestantism came in.  Shrove Tuesday is widely observed in Anglican circles. "Shrove" in this context derives from an Old English word for "absolve", and it reflected the day which people reflected on their lives and resolved to work on them over Lent.  Lent is still a penitential season in the Anglican Communion, but has been much less observed than in the Apostolic faiths where its a major seasons.  Having said that, at least by observation, there seem to be a revival of Lenten observation in Anglican circules.

In English speaking countries today is also Pancake Tuesday or Pancake Day for the same reason that French speaking countries call it Mardi Gras.  Pancakes are made with fat and flour and there was an effort to use up fat by making big pancake breakfasts on this day.

Nearly every country with a Christian heritage, except perhaps those in North American, have a celebration on this day with a strong regional, national and Christian aspect to them, including those nations who followed Luther into the Reformation. The Icelanders, for example, feast today with salted fish and meats.  It's interesting how widespread this custom is, and in some ways makes the American celebration of it seem a bit poor in comparison, outside of those areas of the Louisiana and Texas where the locals are celebrating it for real.

As a final note, why would people be so focused, as part of this, in using up the household fats and meat?

Well, before refrigeration, and with a stricter fast in place, those things weren't going to last until after Easter.

Lex Anteinternet: Today is Clean Monday. . .

Lex Anteinternet: Today is Clean Monday. . .:

Today is Clean Monday. . .

in those Eastern Rite Churches that are part of the Catholic Church in predominantly Latin Rite countries.  For Eastern Rite Churches that use the old calendar and for the Orthodox Clean Monday is on March 2, a week from today.

Clean Monday is the first day of  Great Lent in the East (although technically it actually starts the Sunday prior) and marks the beginning of the Lenten Fast, which is much broader in the East than the West.  Shellfish are the traditional entre, as they're an exception, and darned near the only one, to the prohibition on meat in the Eastern fast.



It's also a day of celebration and a public holiday in quite a few Orthodox nations and features the flying of kites, as its the traditional first day of spring in those cultures.



Don't get a celebration on a day commencing a long fast?  Well, its a fast with a purpose, not because of dietary fad or some public agony virtue signaling effort.  And ultimately, although it'll be forty days later, it'll be followed by a feast.

Lex Anteinternet: January 6, 1920. Peace Secured. Protestants Unite? Suffrage Advances.

Lex Anteinternet: January 6, 1920. Peace Secured. Protestants Unit...:

An historical item posted on one of our companion blogs of potential interest here.

January 6, 1920. Peace Secured. Protestants Unite? Suffrage Advances.

The headline news for this day, January 6, 1920, was that a treaty was to be signed between the victorious Allies and the Germans.  Or, more properly, a protocol to the Versailles Treaty

More properly, this was an amendment to the Versailles Treaty altering and amending some of its terms.  Germany's reluctance to enter into a protocol had lead the Allies and Germany back to the brink of war several months earlier, an event now wholly forgotten, but in the end the amendment had been worked out.

The U.S. Senate had not ratified the original text and would still not be ratifying the treaty in its entirety.

The Casper paper was also reporting that a new Wyoming corporation had been formed to build or take over the manufacturing of the Curtis Aircraft line.  I've never heard of this before and Wikipedia sheds no light on what was going on with this story.  Does anyone know the details?

Also making headlines was an effort to unite the nation's Protestant churches into a single organization. The headlines are apparently a bit misleading as they would suggest that the individual denominations were set to be united, which was not the proposal.

Also misleading, today, is the use of the term "United Church of Christ". That denomination would not come about until 1957.

On the same day, Kentucky and Rhode Island passed the 19th Amendment.

Suffrage supporters watching the Governor of Kentucky sign his state's passage of the 19th Amendment.

And Walt experienced something that I routinely do a century later.

Churches of the West: Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew states a r...

Churches of the West: Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew states a r...: More than that, he essentially said there are no barriers to it. This is unlikely to be front page news in the United States, but it is in...

Lex Anteinternet: Thanksgiving Reflections

Lex Anteinternet: Thanksgiving Reflections: Puritans on their way to church. It's become sort of an odd tradition in the US in recent years to either criticize a holiday in ge...

Lex Anteinternet: St. Hubert's Day.

Lex Anteinternet: St. Hubert's Day.:

St. Hubert's Day.

Today is St. Hubert's Day.  That is, the day on the Catholic calendar honoring this Saint.

St. Hubert encounters the deer.

St. Hubert lived more recently, post Roman Empire, having been born in 656 and living until 727.  He was born in what is now southern France into a noble family, but was sent north to Paris at an early age.  Due to political turmoil, he was one of many who ended up it Metz as sort of a noble refugee and we need to keep in mind that France, as a solid political entity, didn't exist at the time. Anyhow, he married one Floribanne, daughter of Dagobert, Count of Leuven, and the couple had a son, Floribert, later the Bishop of Liege.  In this fluid political time, therefore, fate had taken Huber from Toulouse to Liège in an onward northern migration.

Hubert was not a religious man and that condition was amplified when his wife died giving birth to Floribert, a not uncommon fate for women at the time.  After that, Hubert took entirely to hunting in the Ardennes, living a solitary hunting life.  On a Good Friday, however when the faithful were gathering in Church in honor of that day (which is not a Holy Day of Obligation) he encountered a great stag and the it turned on him, cross between its horns, and spoke, saying:

Hubert, unless thou turn to the Lord, and lead a holy life, you shall quickly go down into hell.

It's hard to ignore a thing like that, to say the least, and Hubert dismounted from his horse and immediately, according to tradition, replied; "Lord, what would You have me do?", to which the reply came "Go and seek Lambert, and he will instruct you."  Hubert entered the priesthood and rose to the rank of Bishop of Liege, which he occupied until his death, at which point his priest son took over that position.  Both are saints.

According to the legend of his encounter, the deer also lectured St. Hubert on having higher regard for animals and engaging in human hunting practices, including taking old stags beyond their prime breeding years, and also to take sick or injured animals even if it meant passing up on a shot at atrophy.  There's more to it, but St. Hubert is accordingly still  held in high regard in Germany, Austria and France among hunters and ethical hunting principals taught in European hunting societies are attributed to him.

St. Hubert is the patron Saint of Hunters and is still celebrated in Northern Europe, where he is the patron of hunting associations.  In Germany, hunters celebrated this day as Hubertustag, pausing in the hunting season to honor St. Hubert.



As we had just referenced him in the post noted above, and we're further noting this day ourselves.

Churches of the West: Minor Irritants

Churches of the West: Minor Irritants: My home Parish, 1958.  This was before I was born.  It was also before the architectural insult of removing the alter rails occurred in t...