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Mythic holiday:
Lent
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LENT

Lent, in the Christian church, a period of penitential preparation for Easter. In Western churches it begins on Ash Wednesday, six and a half weeks before Easter, and provides for a 40-day fast (Sundays are excluded), in imitation of Jesus Christ’s fasting in the wilderness before he began his public ministry. In Eastern churches Lent begins on the Monday of the seventh week before Easter and ends on the Friday that is nine days before Easter. This 40-day “Great Lent” includes Saturdays and Sundays as relaxed fast days
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Lent, in the Christian church, a period of penitential preparation for Easter. In Western churches it begins on Ash Wednesday, six and a half weeks before Easter, and provides for a 40-day fast (Sundays are excluded), in imitation of Jesus Christ’s fasting in the wilderness before he began his public ministry. In Eastern churches Lent begins on the Monday of the seventh week before Easter and ends on the Friday that is nine days before Easter. This 40-day “Great Lent” includes Saturdays and Sundays as relaxed fast days
In the early Church, the Lenten abstinence and fasting laws were more strict than what the faithful practice today. Many areas of the Church abstained from all forms of meat and animal products…For example, Pope St. Gregory (d. 604), writing to St. Augustine of Canterbury, issued the following rule: 'We abstain from flesh, meat, and from all things that come from flesh, as milk, cheese and eggs.' … According to pretzel maker Snyders of Hanover, a young monk in the early 600s in Italy was preparing a special Lenten bread of water, flour and salt. To remind his brother monks that Lent was a time of prayer.
Some of the Fathers as early as the fifth century supported the view that this forty days' fast was of Apostolic institution. For example, St. Leo (d. 461) exhorts his hearers to abstain that they may 'fulfill with their fasts the Apostolic institution of the forty days' — ut apostolica institutio quadraginta dierum jejuniis impleatur (P.L., LIV, 633), and the historian Socrates (d. 433) and St. Jerome (d. 420) use similar language (P.G., LXVII, 633; P.L., XXII, 475).
Lent is the Christian season of spiritual preparation before Easter. In Western churches, it begins on Ash Wednesday. During Lent, many Christians observe a period of fasting, repentance, moderation, self-denial, and spiritual discipline. The purpose of the Lenten season is to set aside time for reflection on Jesus Christ—to consider his suffering and his sacrifice, his life, death, burial, and resurrection.
The forty-day period of Lent has many resonances in biblical symbolism because the number forty is an important biblical number. The forty-days of Lent corresponds to the forty days Jesus spent in the wilderness when he was tempted by Satan before beginning his ministry. It also alludes to the forty days that Moses spent on Mount Sinai with God; the forty days and nights Elijah spent walking to Mt. Horeb; the forty days and forty nights of rain in the story of Noah; the forty years of wandering by the Hebrews during their Exodus from the Promised Land; and Jonah's prophecy of judgment, which gave the city of Nineveh forty days grace in which to repent.
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