Welcome to Livlife. Where I am living my life out loud, for all to read.

I was beginning to feel that the intellectual portion of this blog was slipping. I kind of felt like it had been a while since I practiced my research skills, learned something new, and shared it with all of you, my readers. So I started my sleuthing with that very question.....and:

 

YIKES!

 

The last time I deigned to educate the masses was back on November 30th. Well, clearly, I must now do something to correct this oversight.

 

So here we go.

 

Happy Fat Tuesday!

 

Oh yeah, lucky for me today is the last day of Mardi Gras. I wondered how many of you actually know anything about the history of this day--as in, why do people use it as a reason to get drunk and stupid?

 

Do we really NEED a reason? No, of course not. But there is one...

 

Mardi Gras (literally translated from the French as Fat Tuesday) is always the day preceding Ash Wednesday. For the non-Christians in the bunch (or the atheists, pagans, agnostics, wiccans, etc. who may have dropped by) Ash Wednesday is the day that marks the beginning of Lent. Lent is the 40 days (not counting Sundays) that lead up to Easter. Easter being the most important holiday in the Catholic (and many Christian) religions. Easter Sunday is the day that Jesus was resurrected from the dead, three days following his crucifixion.

 

The 40 days of Lent are representative of the time that Jesus spent in the desert, where Satan was present to tempt him over and over again, to no avail. Lent is thusly used as a time of fasting, repentance, and prayer, to prepare us for Holy Week (commemorating the last week of Jesus' life on earth and includes the well-known holy day of Good Friday) and then Easter, where Jesus was risen.

 

Got all that? That was my quick tutorial on Christian observances of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. (read the links if you need more)

 

So--that still does not explain why we have Mardi Gras. Does it?

 

Here's what it comes down to. Mardi Gras is an ancient tradition with its roots in Catholic conversion from paganism. A feast was created to allow the people to revel, creating excitement in the faith, since the day following the feast was the beginning of Lent. During Lent, people fast and refrain from temptation, giving it a somewhat tame reputation. It is a tame time, where people do not feast on meat, they do not celebrate, they pray--a lot, and they refrain from all sins. But trying to convert pagans to this way of life...well, they saw this and were pretty much uninterested. So, before making them observe the rituals of Lent, they tempted them over with feasting and revelry in the form of Carnival; which eventually morphed into today's modern Mardi Gras celebrations.

 

So, today, people from all faiths and beliefs celebrate Mardi Gras (or some variation) for a couple of weeks leading up to Fat Tuesday, the final, uproarious celebration. And then Lent begins and we Catholics do our thing.

 

I guess what we've learned is this. If you want someone to do something they don't want to do; like convert from their system of faith to yours, the best way to get them in board....?

 

Get them really drunk first. They'll do whatever you want.

 

See, life lessons from long-dead Catholic leaders. And you think religion has no sense of humor.

 

Ha!

 

19 days until my own day of revelry.