The fight between Mardi Gras and Lent.

f I could be grant­ed one vast and naive wish, it would be that the pagan world would stop tak­ing our hol­i­days and per­vert­ing their mean­ing. They do it with Christ­mas and East­er; they do it with Hal­loween; God knows they do it with Mar­di Gras. I say: Let them invent their own days, and eat their own cakes, and drink their own ale.

feasts are bought with fasts

The word “hol­i­day” is a kind of con­trac­tion; it comes from the Old Eng­lish hæligdæg, or “holy day.” Is this a hol­i­day or a holy day? we ask of some day per­vert­ed out of its true mean­ing; as though they were two, as though we could turn sec­u­lar a day that is meant to be a reprieve from the sec­u­lar. Joy and cel­e­bra­tion and feast­ing, right­ly under­stood, are holy: They give us a fore­taste of heav­en and remind us of our true long­ing. They tell us of a world to come where every day will be hol­i­day. But we treat holiness as though it were a dour thing, and then call holiday some­thing dif­fer­ent.

Thus the divi­sion of souls from God begins with the divi­sion of words from mean­ing. Per­chance it would help to start pro­nounc­ing “hol­i­day” the way we pro­nounce “holi­ness.”

Now, what Mar­di Gras reminds us is that feasts must be bought with fasts; we are still here, and not yet there. Right­ly under­stood, Mar­di Gras is the day when fam­i­lies use up all eggs, fats, and but­ter in the home in prepa­ra­tion for Lent. The idea is, one does not want those mate­ri­als to spoil and go to waste. That’s not real­ly glut­tony; that’s thrift. You get fat, or gras, not for the sake of fat­ness but to get rid of all that tempts dis­ci­pline of will.

Mar­di Gras does not mean, go, and get all the sin out of your sys­tem; which, in the prac­ti­cal real­i­ty of pagan cul­ture, gets trans­formed into, go, and use this day as an excuse for the debauch­ery you engage in any­way. The day does not mean, do your sin in pub­lic today, for tomor­row you will do it in pri­vate.

It is right, at the end of sea­sons of joy and feast (Christ­mas and Epiphany) to indulge in some last harm­less, sin­less joy. In Heav­en is per­pet­u­al joy, not per­pet­u­al sin. (They are oppo­sites.) There is no Mar­di Gras in Heav­en only because there is no Ash Wednes­day and no Lent, not because there is no fun. There is joy in heav­en because there is no sin.

We have Mar­di Gras here because there is sin, and we need Lent; and so it is also the day, in addi­tion to the last feast for forty, when—if you had not yet made a recent confession—you did so. The joy and cel­e­bra­tion and feast­ing on Mar­di Gras are always tem­pered by a spir­it of penance. If you may call it such, you may call it a somber feast, and eat your meat with a bit­ter bel­ly. Tomor­row is Ash Wednes­day.

gras or shriven?

It would be bet­ter if we had not relied on the depraved French to name this hol­i­day for us, but instead on the prac­ti­cal Eng­lish.

The Eng­lish name for Mar­di Gras is Shrove­tide. (Not “Fat Tues­day” but “Shrove Tues­day.”) To “shrive” means, either, “to con­fess,” or, “to absolve.” It is one of those old words which ought to come back into use. (But not so much that it gets cor­rupt­ed too.)

“Mar­di Gras,” as it hath been cor­rupt­ed by wicked men, sig­ni­fi­eth get­ting one­self gras, not on cakes and ale, but on sin. But “Shrove­tide” remindeth the soul of man of the need to be shriv­en. To shrive and be shriv­en is to have joy. Lat­er. First one must con­tem­plate the depth of sin, and its cost to God. That should take at least forty days, once a year.

But speak­ing of words and their mean­ings, did you know that the word “car­ni­val” comes from the Latin car­nis, mean­ing meat? Car­ni­val is no more than the time when we eat meat as an out­ward sign of our joy of spir­it.

How words get wrenched and twist­ed and stran­gled is a source of end­less per­plex­i­ty to me.

a brueghel

But none of this is new under the sun. Here is a paint­ing from 450 years ago, show­ing the exact same ten­sion between Shrove­tide and Lent.

On the left of the paint­ing is an inn; on the right, a church. Near the church are well-behaved chil­dren; near the inn, men drunk on beer. Promi­nent in the front, and just slight­ly toward the left, a fat man (Car­ni­val) rides a beer bar­rel with a pork chop attached to the front. On his head he wears a meat pie. Imme­di­ate­ly in front of him (and to our right) Christ (Lent) wears a pur­ple robe and a buck­et in place of a crown of thorns. In his right hand, Christ extends two pieces of fish.

Which side are you on: the side of the fat man besot­ted with beer and full with meat; or the side of the wound­ed Christ about to be cru­ci­fied and eat­ing a spare meal?

a satire on protestants

In ear­ly mod­ern Europe, as part of Shrove­tide cel­e­bra­tions, a bat­tle was enact­ed between two fig­ures, the one rep­re­sent­ing Car­ni­val, the oth­er Lent: a bat­tle between the flesh (car­nis) and the spir­it. In part, Brueggel is depict­ing one such bat­tle.

But some crit­ics also view the paint­ing as a satire on the reli­gious con­tro­ver­sies of the day between Protes­tants and Catholics. Calvin­ists and Luther­ans had abol­ished the obser­vance of Lent, believ­ing it to con­tribute to a the­ol­o­gy of works (since alms­giv­ing is a tra­di­tion­al part of one’s Lenten dis­ci­pline). The “Car­ni­val” fig­ures in the paint­ing are Protes­tants; the “Lent” are Catholics.

Brueggel, in oth­er words, sat­i­rizes Protes­tants for act­ing as though they can have per­pet­u­al Car­ni­val, and no Lent: grace with­out works, feast­ing with­out fast­ing. Once that the­o­log­i­cal error creeps in, the sled goes down­hill and crash­es into the wreck of pagan indul­gence.

between carnival and confessional

In truth it is a false dichoto­my, the fight between Mar­di Gras and Lent; only in Heav­en is there Mar­di Gras with­out Lent, only in Hell Lent with­out East­er. Here, caught between the two worlds, we must buy feast at the price of fast, and tem­per joy with sor­row. Between Mar­di Gras and Lent, car­ni­val and con­fes­sion­al, nei­ther must have the upper hand.

For myself, as I do this day every year (or I try), I indulge with some steak and baked pota­to, and fin­ish the last of the beer. And then I pray and pre­pare for ash and a sea­son of shriv­ing.