Ash Wednesday is the first day of fasting for Lent. At church services on this day worshippers are marked on their forehead with the ash made from burning the palms used for the previous year’s Palm Sunday – hence ‘Ash’ Wednesday. Lent, which lasts from Ash Wednesday to Easter, commemorates Jesus’s forty days and nights spent fasting in the wilderness after his baptism by John the Baptist.
Lenten fasting (the prohibition of dairy products, eggs and meat) ends at sunset on Holy Saturday. In Orthodox Churches, the fast is broken on Lazarus Saturday (the day before Palm Sunday). For devout Christians the period of Lent involves spiritual preparation for the celebration of Easter: prayer, repentance of sins, almsgiving, and self-denial.
In recent times, secularisation has meant that the prohibition of dairy products, eggs and meat is rarely followed – but it is still a custom to make a sacrifice of a particular favourite food or drink such as chocolate or alcohol.
Traditionally, no dairy products, eggs or meat could be eaten during Lent. Today it is more usual to deny oneself a particular favourite food, drink or habit.
Almsgiving is a tradition of Lent in the Christian Church. The money saved on not buying your favourite food or drink during Lent can, instead, be given to charity.
The figure of a man made of straw and cast-off clothes and known as Jack-a-Lent, supposedly representing Judas Iscariot, was paraded through the streets on Ash Wednesday. He was then kept safely somewhere in the parish until Palm Sunday when he would be burnt, or in some cases, shot at.
