It’s Carnival Time!
In our traditional Catholic mindset, we’re inclined to focus on the spiritual aspects of these last few days before Lent starts. The idea of preparing ourselves for the Great Fast of forty days tends to instill in us with thoughts other than enthusiasm. It’s true, and we know it to be true, that the penances we are about to undertake are the result of man’s sinfulness. We have offended God and it’s time to pay back a little of the damage we have caused. We’re gradually slipping into this re-recognition of how wicked we’ve been, and as a result we start feeling guilty and perhaps even a little depressed. We’ve been bad and now it’s time to pay the piper. We are not happy campers.
Countering this “traditional Catholic” mindset is the behavior of the secular world. Its response to the beginning of Lent is “Eat, drink and merry, for tomorrow we die!” The godless folks of this world do not see Shrove Tuesday as a time for shriving their souls of sin by going to confession. They prefer to call the day before Lent “Mardi Gras,” (Fat Tuesday), and have turned it into a day of gluttony and debauchery. Thanks to the Devil, the world’s actions during the end of Shrovetide have become diametrically opposed to ours. Or so it seems.
Actually, there are reasons, good reasons, to explain why the world plunges itself into vice every year at this time. The world has simply forgotten those reasons. Mardi Gras in fact derives from the Catholic custom of consuming all the leftover meats in the house before the fast begins. Even we traditional Catholics perform the same annual routine of emptying the fridge of all the goodies we’re about to abstain from. We finish up the cold cuts in the knowledge that we can’t have a meat sandwich for lunch anymore, unless we want it to be our main meal. So goodbye meat! Or as they say in Latin, “Carni Vale”. And as for all those pastries, cookies and chocolate cakes that for the rest of the year take the edge off our day, well, we’d better get rid of the temptation they’re going to be, starting Wednesday. And what better way to get rid of them than eat them! Hence, Fat Tuesday, a day on which we are more than usually inclined to overindulge our appetites. Trust me, the Devil is always ready to pervert the things of God into something evil.
Like Halloween, Carnival Time is more Catholic than we imagine. The trick is to keep it Catholic. Follow by all means those traditions of Carnival that respect our transition into the Lenten penance. Ancient traditions that are pleasing to God should not be shown the kind of universal contempt that some of the stricter variety of “Traditionalists” tend to display. Our blessed Lord himself warned us not to go around in sackcloth and ashes with a face glum enough to sink a ship. We should not be trying to make sure everybody knows what good Christians we are and what terrible penances we’re inflicting on ourselves. When we do penance, let’s do it smiling. Why? Because we have a reason to smile. We’re doing something for God—and if we love God as we say we do, why wouldn’t we be happy doing something that makes him happy?
So before those penances begin on Wednesday, before the ashes are applied to our foreheads with the grim reminder that we are dust and unto dust we shall return, before the fast begins, by all means enjoy these last couple of days of Carnival. Eat, drink and be merry one last time. Don’t eat too much, don’t drink yourselves silly, but have a good time and act in moderation. If you’re doing things that you like doing, that’s okay so long as you’re not offending God by doing it. And if God doesn’t mind you having a good time, then neither do I, and neither should you.