Toujours Gras?
Every year on or before February 14, here at ground zero of the bibliocopia that is InterVarsity Press, the business department expresses its love for the rest of the company with an extravagant spread of food. Cakes and cookies and candies and chips and sundry other offerings are laid out atop folding tables covered with red vinyl tablecloths. This year, that day is today. I went for a peek and came back with a handful (and, I freely confess, a mouthful) of cheese. I went back later for some dessert and came back with some nachos. I went back later for some dessert and came back with, finally, dessert. That, and a feeling of mild discomfort and lethargy.
This year Valentine's Day, which inspires the annual business offering, comes just a few days before Ash Wednesday, which every year offers an occasion for excess known as Fat Tuesday, or the less guilt-inducing Mardi Gras. On Fat Tuesday, the logic goes, you indulge in enough vice (covering the spectrum of social acceptability from food to flashing) to tide you over through Lent till the day after Easter. That's a lot of vice, people. This year Fat Tuesday should be especially extravagant, since New Orleans--ground zero of the carnalcopia that is Mardi Gras--is still high off the Saints' victory at Super Bowl Sunday.
The tradition of overindulgence the day before Lent extends beyond Creole culture, of course. The Polish call Fat Tuesday "Paczki (pronounced "ponchki") Day," in honor of the enormous filled donuts they prepare in bulk. This time last year I stood in line at a local bakery for half an hour to pick up my paczkis; it felt like I was at a U2 concert and Larry Mullin Jr. had just ticked off the marching beat that announces "Sunday Bloody Sunday." The air was thick with energy and powdered sugar.
A friend of mine, author of one of my favorite books of 2008, mentioned in an e-mail the other day that she had gotten her calendar off by a week, so she wound up celebrating Fat Tuesday a week early. (I leave how she celebrated to your imagination.) It struck me that self-indulgence is no longer something easily isolated to one day a year. One could look at my caloric intake today, for example, and legitimately label the day "Jeudi Gras," or "Fat Thursday." Every day I hop on my Wii Fit board for my body check, and a sing-songy computer voice tells me, with wicked delight, "That's overweight." The trend in soft drinks right now is to release special editions featuring "real sugar" instead of the temporarily unpopular corn syrup. Want more sales? Just add sugar. And beyond U.S. borders, Italy's minister of agriculture is currently boasting of a deal with McDonald's for a special line of "McItaly" burgers. The country that brought you the slow food movement is now in the pocket of the behemoth that brought you the obesity crisis. (Allegedly.)
We don't need a Fat Tuesday or Thursday to celebrate, folks. We need a "Skinny Sunday"--and by that I don't mean a pile of lite ice cream topped with lo-fat chocolate syrup.
We may think we deserve a break today, but I think what Mardi Gras reminds us anymore is that the break we need is the one that Lent affords us: a break from the habits and patterns that make us feel so good in the moment but that compromise our health for years afterward. We need an Ash Wednesday. Good thing one's coming.
Posted by Dave Zimmerman
at February 11, 2010 1:40 PM
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