Every year, at about 5:00 p.m. on the Tuesday that falls forty-seven days before the Sunday after the first full moon on, or after, the vernal equinox—which is to say, Mardi Gras Day—for about fifteen minutes, I get depressed. Carnival, the greatest of all seasons in New Orleans, is about to end. The weeks of drinking, eating, parading, costuming, dancing, and communing are suddenly coming to a close. Goodbye glitter, goodbye good times, hello (sad trombone)…Lent.
Then again (I think, after a few minutes of gloom): Helloooo Lent! Because that’s when I remember: I love Lent!
Technically, this is an inappropriate reaction. Lent, which runs from Ash Wednesday until sundown on Holy Thursday, is meant to be a solemn observance, forty days of commemorating Jesus Christ’s time of fasting and temptation in the desert through contemplation and abstention. Though I am