Ash Wednesday. So begins the longest six weeks of the year, whatever you believe. We’re all waiting for spring. Lent carries the ghostly resonance of that ancient, precarious time between the end of the winter larder and the first of the spring crops. A period of hardship and hope, everyone aching for nature’s resurrection. Ash Wednesday, for the faithful, marks the beginning of a long, bleak road to Good Friday. And I mean really long and bleak. Imagine coming off the M25 at junction 29 and then heading along the A127, but so slowly that it takes you six weeks to reach Basildon, and then when you get there everything’s shut and God is dead and it remains Basildon.
Lent has always been religious and not at the same time. You don’t have to be shiny-eyed and wearing an adult Minions jumper to give something up. “Count your blessings,” is the point. Deny yourself something you like, reflect that you’re lucky to have it, feel grateful to be able to have it again. And how very British, this tradition of having one last hedonistic fling before the shutters come down and calling it Pancake Day. It’s not Mardi Gras, is it? You’re not in New Orleans snorting and guzzling your way through some high-risk bacchanal. You’re not in your pants having a fist fight with Tennessee Williams, are you? You’re in Bury St Edmunds, you’ve had three pancakes and it’s a school night.
There’s something reassuring about the half-arsed, ramshackle nature of Lent, its billowing accommodation. Church types take it seriously as a period of self-examination and penance, a mortifying of the flesh, and they have withering disdain for those using Lent to “get into shape for spring”. The idea of feeling good about yourself is, they argue, the absolute opposite of what you’re supposed to be doing. You’re supposed to feel bad about yourself. You’re supposed to humbly and with contrition acknowledge your gittery and then promise God that you’ll be less of a git in the future.
Alas, these days there is no self-denial so slight it cannot be chronicled on social media. It’s becoming odder with every passing year, the old-fashioned idea of giving something up and keeping quiet about it. If you decide to shun alcohol for a month, we’ll be following you every step of the way, won’t we? There’ll be the Facebook page for a start. A chronicle of bravery and self-love, with its rows of daily “feeling proud” badges you’ve awarded yourself like some lunatic despot. And a photo of your dead dad or your dead dog. And an algorithmic quote in a handwriting font about how it’s not selfish to do what’s best for you because in the end it makes you a better person for others, over a photograph of zebras at sunset or Robin Williams.
Meanwhile, those using Lent as a timetable for personal improvement say it’s the churchgoers who are the niche weirdos. Let’s face it, an atheist explaining their weight loss to a Christian is a lot more straightforward than a Christian explaining the genre smash-up that is Holy Week. It starts as a feelgood movie, all donkeys and palm leaves and cheering crowds. Reform in the air. Mr Christ Goes to Jerusalem. Oh-oh, it’s slipped into a dark thriller, with a double agent and a night-time arrest. Now it’s plunged from courtroom drama into torture porn. The sinister villains – basically the Conservative frontbench in togas – have, with the help of a rightwing media, transformed all those Palm Sunday hippies into heartless, bloodthirsty bastards. We watch the horrific, protracted, cinematic death of Our Hero. Bosh. Nice one, Quentin Tarantino. Fifty minutes too long, as usual. Let’s slip out before the credits and oh, WHAT NOW? Magical realism, really? He’s come back to life? But … oh, NOW the credits? What?
Of course, theologically it’s much more complicated than that. I’m no expert. But sceptical atheists are building a solid case, year on year. Church of England Sunday attendances are down to 760,000 and falling. The total number of worshippers at all CoE services recently dropped below one million a week. I don’t know how many people were actually at an Ash Wednesday service this morning, but I imagine the Archbishop of Canterbury could have easily “done” them all via Google Hangouts. Fewer than one million a week though, my GOD. If Anglicans were pelicans they’d be on an endangered list. I mean, Radio 6 Music now has two million listeners a week. Incredible to think that there are twice as many people singing along to Father John Misty as there are reciting the Lord’s Prayer.
It’s great that we’ve cast off the yoke of organised religion. And it’s great that churches, against the odds, are able to keep their kindly lights on. In this aggressive, secular age I am enormously grateful that we can tolerate both the observances of the properly faithful and – here I raise a shaky hand – the bumbling uncertainties of the sort-of faithful. Lent is for the devout and the not-arsed, and for the vast majority of us – the sort-of dos and sort-of don’ts, all putting up with one another, patiently waiting for spring.
- This article was amended on 11 February 2016 to correct the spelling of Bury St Edmunds.