Happy Mardi Gras!!

Happy Mardi Gras everyone!!! The French, ironically enough, don't really celebrate it anymore. And Carnival, as it's known in many other cultures, is a much bigger deal elsewhere. Either way, it's the day before the Catholics start that time of year known as Lent.

What the average person sees: Mardi Gras is the day to eat everything you want and for the people in New Orleans to go topless before all the Catholics start dieting

While this might be true on some aspects, there is so much more to Lent than just a dieting plan. I'm not sure when it happened that the tri-fold preparation for Easter and for Christ's ultimate forgiveness of our sins was reduced to the time to lose weight or whatever it is that people seem to be doing these days.

The origional idea was to have alms-giving (so doing something good for others), prayer AND sacrifice (giving stuff up) to prepare oneself. Somewhere the positives of Lent got tossed out the window and all that seems to be left is the "give stuff up" portion. Sad. Prayer and Alms-giving can be wonderful things. Have you ever done something nice out of the kindness of your heart, gotten nothing in return, and felt good about yourself?? That's what alms-giving is all about-- helping others is good for the heart. And prayer is always good!!

So yeah, I'm not sure how my Mardi Gras thoughts ended up as a tanget about the point of Lent... but there it is. But one thing is for sure-- today I actually am going to eat lots of pastries, because that's tradition and why not!! So go on, eat a pastry, have some cake, grab some ice cream- Catholics and non-Catholics all over the world are doing it, you might as well too!! Happy Fat Tuesday!