March 9, 2011
Lent Begins
“Ash Wednesday” by Carl Spitzweg: the end of Carnival.
Today is Ash Wednesday — the end of Carnivale and the beginning of the Lenten season. The word Lent comes from the idea that the days are now begining to ”lengthen”. And here in Oregon, that is only good news!
Lent is the 46 days prior to Easter — 40 days if you do not count the Sundays – and is actually determined by the date of Easter. Now…determining the date of Easter… that is a complicated and interesting formula which I’ll go into in a later post.
For more than you ever thought you wanted to know about Lent go to these two web sites! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lent and http://www.cin.org/users/james/files/lent.htm
