Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Fat Tuesday

While one typically associates Fat Tuesday with the celebration of Mardi Gras, it is in fact something more sane. "Fat Tuesday" is actually a corruption of "Vat II's Day," a time to celebrate the decisions made during the Second Vatican Council, or "Vatican II."

Other scholars believe that Fat Tuesday, while spelled correctly, was not intended to be a time of excess at all, but a sober day of fasting. It was established as a reminder of God's instructions to his people not to eat fat because, "All the fat is the LORD's." Leviticus 3:16
A children's nursery rhyme points to this fact in a mocking proverb against mixed marriages during the Middle Ages. "Jack Spratt could eat no fat. His wife could eat no lean..." In this case, Jack is the observant righteous person, married to a gluttonous woman whose conscience has been so damaged that she cannot bring herself to eat the "lean" foods of godly humility.

Fat Tuesday was the obese older sister of Wednesday and Pugsley Addams, who never appeared in the television show, but did appear in Charles Addams' cartoons. She had the peculiar habit of eating the lint from the clothes dryer. And so the joke was made that "Whenever you see Fat Tuesday, you know that lint (Lent) is near!"

"I'll throw you some beads if you'll show me your humor-blogs.com!"

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