Today is International Pancake Day. While this has nothing to do with IHOP, I did see that they were passing out free pancakes earlier today. Today is also, of course, Fat Tuesday, or if you prefer the French, Mardi Gras. I've been to a few Mardi Gras celebrations in my life and they are lots of fun. Music, dancing in the streets, lavish floats, parades and beads, lots of beads. I did accumulate some beads along the way but not in the traditional way. They were just being tossed off the floats. Of course all this celebration means that Lent will start tomorrow with Ash Wednesday. Now my question is when did protestant churches start observing Ash Wednesday? In my childhood only Catholics (and they were few and far between in my small home town) walked around with ashes on their foreheads. In my very conservative Lutheran congregation that would have been considered much too Catholic. But now my anything but conservative Presbyterian church observes Ash Wednesday. I don't mind it and I plan to attend the service tomorrow evening, but I must admit I still have questions about it.
No comments:
Post a Comment