Timely Bits
A smallish round-up of words and phrases appropriate for this week. As you may know, the period of Lent begins tomorrow, when Christians across the globe will fast (if they are particularly devout) or symbolically give something up in the forty day run-up to Easter. So, today is Shrove Tuesday – well, for Brits and Aussies it is. This is the day when, in times gone by, all the fats and sugary items in the house would be used up in preparation for the fast. Now it’s just an excuse to scoff lots of pancakes and feel sick. The word shrove is the past tense of shrive – a verb meaning “to grant remission of sins”. It actually follows Shrove Monday, which is something I didn’t know until I looked into it. It’s known as carnival in many European countries (Spain, Italy, Germany) and – more famously – Mardi Gras in South America and the USA. The name means “Fat Tuesday” and again refers to the feasting on fatty foodstuffs before the fast. I just realized the unintentional alliteration in the previous sentence. Nice.
Quinquagesima Sunday was yesterday. The quin- prefix refers to the fact that it is five sundays (inclusive) until Easter Sunday. There are also mames for the sith and seventh Sundays before, too (sexagesima and septuagesima). These names have been largely abandoned by many churches and as such, the words are only useful for crosswords and maybe a really lucky game of Scrabble.
Another unmissable event which took place recently was Groundhog Day. Readers who have seen the film of the same name will know all about it but for those who don’t, here’s a bluffer’s guide. Every year on February 2 at 7.30 am in a place called Gobbler’s Knob (no, really) in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, USA, a Groundhog predicts whether or not there will be an early spring. A groundhog is also known as a woodchuck or land beaver. According to tradition, the groundhog emerges from his hole, looks around and if he can see his own shadow, there will be a late Spring – as happened this year. Quite how the groundhog – know as “Punxsutawney Phil” communicates whether or not he can see his shadow is not recorded. This year, the event was attended by some 20,000 people and watched by many more on the Internet. What is more interesting is that Punxsutawney Phil is not alone. There are many groundhogs across the fair (and slightly bonkers) land of the USA, all of whom are experts in the field of meteorology. Just in case you really have nothing better to do, take a look at the Wikipedia article on Groundhog Day and see the predictions. As far as I can see, it’s a pretty even split. If you want to relive the magic moment of when you got up stupidly early and stood in a field waiting for an overgrown squirrel to nip out for a pee, you can go to Phil’s official site. Riveting stuff.
In Poland, where they do everything different, they have “Fat Thursday” (tomorrow) and stuff themselves with delicious Polish doughnuts. I used to make a point of bringing doughnuts into the office during Lent. Nobody ever refused. The devoutness of the Poles is overstated.
I can’t help wondering if some cathedral café anywhere has ever experimented with offering a Quinquagesima Sundae?
Sexagesima Sunday is, obviously, a very discreet stripper.
Daphne: By the time I got to respond, tomorrow was yesterday. Interesting to know, though. It seems the choice between eternity in fire and brimstone or jammy confectionery is an easy one to make!
Autolycus: You should be on the radio
Sexagesima Sunday always sounds to me like a discarded working title for a Beatles track.