IN A 2014 article on Mardi Gras traditions, Charles A. Coulombe wrote:

Our ancestors celebrated [Mardi Gras] to the best of their ability because they kept Lent very strictly: indeed, Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, the wise author of The Physiology of Taste, tells us what Lent was like in pre-Revolutionary France:

No body breakfasted, and therefore all were more hungry than usual.

All dined as well as possible, but fish and vegetables are soon gone through with. At five o’clock all were furiously hungry, looked at their watches and became enraged, though they were securing their soul’s salvation.

At eight o’clock they had not a good supper, but a collation, a word derived from cloister, because at the end of the day the monks used to assemble to comment on the works of the fathers, after which they were allowed a glass of wine.

Neither butter, eggs, nor any thing animal was served at these collations. They had to be satisfied with salads, confitures, and whitemeats, a very unsatisfactory food to such appetites at that time. They went to bed, however, and lived in hope as long as the fast lasted.

I hope you are planning to enjoy some of your favorite things today, dear reader, (perhaps a triple-stuffed-crust pizza hubcap with extra latex) and then say goodbye to all that until Easter. I personally think that giving up industrial-grade pizza does not count as a form of penance. In fact, I think indulging in it is a form of penance (forty days of Domino’s is the ultimate Lent), but it really depends on what gives you pleasure. Far be it for me to define your sacrifices.

Luscious Pillsbury Pizza Pockets

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