Giving up

"Taking a break for Lent. See you at Easter! If you need me, you have my number." Message you can post at your social media sites tomorrow (Ash Wednesday) so people know you're still alive.

Giving up social media for the forty days of Lent has become a thing. Chocolate and alcohol used to be number one and number two on the list of pleasures bypassed in the name of doing some penance or for purification. But nowadays, more and more Millenials and Gen Zers are saying NO to Linked In, Facebook, Instagram, X, Tik Tok, Substack and any of the many other such apps in existence. 

But what if people think I'm gone from those sites for good? And how will anyone know I'm giving it up if I can't get on Tik Tok to tell them?

Remember the words of Saint Matthew. "When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do."

Legend has it that, in the 1950s, when Catholic Bishop of Cork and Ross, Cornelius Lucey, said a biscuit or two was permissible during Lent, many Corkonians developed a taste for vastly oversized biscuits known as 'Connie-dodgers'. Irish Examiner File picture 

There's always a work around

How Irish is the concept of making a sacrifice of some kind during the forty days that Jesus Christ did without food and water in the desert, aka Lent? Very Irish. 

In the Irish language the word for Friday, An Aoine (pronounced un EE-neh), literally means "The Fast." Meatless Fridays, plus a lot of other dietary restrictions, date back to the earliest days of the Catholic church in Ireland when th monks called beer “liquid bread.”

There were always rules about what you couldn’t eat during  Lent, but there were always work arounds as well. Here’s a story from Fintan O’Toole’s book We Don’t Know Ourselves about growing up Catholic in Ireland.

Cornelius Lucey, the Bishop of Cork, insisted on strict rules for Lenten fasting in his diocese. (“One meal and two collations per day. All in abnegation of the flesh,” is how Hibernian Manus O’Donnell describes it.) Collations were basically snacks – a small biscuit with your tea for instance. Moyra Riordan, who ran the Greendoor Coffee Shop in Cork City, came up with a huge biscuit to be served during Lent. Fasters got their fill AND honored the Bishop's rules. All the other bakeries in Cork followed her lead. They called these fast-busting biscuits Connie Dodgers in honor of the Bishop. (“Connie” was a nickname for Cornelius). 

In 1985, a reporter for RTE, the Irish national broadcaster, took to the streets of Dublin to find out what people were giving up for Lent. “I’m giving up the milk in my tea,” said one woman. “I gave up the cigs four years ago. I don’t drink and I gave up sugar when I was a child.” A surprising number of respondents agreed with her that there was nothing left to give up.

The Sprit of Lent and the Law of Lent 

Could the Dry January movement have anything to do with the giving up of alcohol not being as prevalent during Lent as it used to be? Doing without "the drink" for the Forty Days of Lent is easier than ever, if the drink you give up is beer. Beer without alcohol in it - NA they call it - is the one kind of beer seeing sales gains these days. But is the NA beer of today duirng Lent just another Connie Dodger?

For "Cultural Catholics" old habits die hard

People who told the survey takers from the Pew Research Center they grew up in a Catholic family or Catholic environment but don’t currently practice the faith are considered Cultural Catholics (CCs). Some might describe temselves as "Catholic-ish." Very few of them attend Mass but a third of them still give up something or do something righteous for Lent, they say. No doubt a lot of those CCs are Millenial and Gen Z types from Evangelical and Non-denominational sects who are drawn to the idea of Social Media Lent. For old school Reformed and Baptist congregations there's not much talk of giving anything up or doing good deeds for the forty days because the word Lent never appears in the Bible; nor is there anything in the Good Book about getting ashes on your forehead.

The Irish Goodbye

As for letting people somehow know you're not off social media, you're just taking a break for Lent, try the Irish Goodbye. In other words, just leave. ("The English say goodbye and never leave. The Irish leave and never say goodbye." Anon.) 

I hope you don't give up corned beef and cabbage. But even if you do there are vegetarian options available at this year’s St. Patrick’s Day Banquet on March 7.