The name, as probably everyone knows, comes from the ancient custom of imprinting the sign of the cross on penitents' foreheads, using ashes made from the burning of the previous year's Palm Sunday palms. The ritual is thought to have been instituted by Gregory the Great, Pope 590-604.
The best-known ode for this day is T.S. Eliot's "Ash Wednesday", but more familiar is the phrase "ashes to ashes, dust to dust," from the English burial service.
Then there is the old jazzman's riff: "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust/If the liquor don't get you, the women must."
And now, off to church. I will don my Armani sackcloth.
A perspective on Lent that the West doesn't often see is that of the eastern Orthodox communion.
ReplyDeleteIn the Orthodox world there are no less than four Lenten seasons - one for each of the year's Great Festivals. The pre-Easter one is called Great Lent. It begins on Clean Monday, March 10 (Ash Wednesday and other Gregorian innovations, including the eponymous calendar, are schismatic Frankish innovations) and ends Easter Sunday April 27.
If the dates seem out of whack it's because they're from the good old Julian calendar. The Orthodox have no use for Gregory's newfangled almanac.
The nearest equivalent of the western pre-Lenten Carnival is the four-week Triodion, so memorably depicted in Stravinsky's "Petrouchka."