This Wednesday is “Ash Wednesday,” the beginning of the traditional church season of Lent. Lent is a fast season, traditionally set aside as a time of penitence and abstinence, a forty-day period of self-denial and meditation on the cross.
How depressing, we might think, to spend forty days every year meditating on the cross, thinking about our sins, fasting. Don’t we want to be more upbeat? Aren’t Christians supposed to be happy?
As a historical matter, the churches that have excluded Lent have not replaced it with a permanent atmosphere of joy. Reformed churches abolished Lent early on, and at the same time suppressed popular amusements and festivals: “In Scotland,” for example, “from the mid-1570s on, there was a sustained attack on the celebration of Christmas, Midsummer, and other festivals with singing, dancing, bonfires and plays” (Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe , p. 219).
This was not an exclusively “Puritan” trend. During the 17th century, Catholics in Madrid closed the theaters, just as Protestants in London did, and Orthodox reformers pursued a similar program in Russia. In Reformed churches, the suppression of Lent has been simultaneous with the suppression of Carnival and other seasons of playful joy. Suppression of Lent did not produce perpetual Easter; it produced a perpetual Lent.
I’m not suggesting a direct cause-and-effect. But I am suggesting that there is wisdom in setting aside a specific period for mourning, self-examination, and fasting. We acknowledge Lent in the same way and for the same reason we have a time of Confession at the beginning of each worship service. There is a time for lament over sins; there is a time for mourning our own depravity. But lament and mourning ought not choke out rejoicing in the goodness of God.
When the Lenten spirit is not given its due, it has threatened to engulf the whole year. The Lenten spirit is part of the church’s life, and if we don’t wear ashes and purple for forty days, we might well end up wearing them for 365.
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