Giving up anything for Lent?

NO SOONER have we emerged from “dry” January or even “veganuary” (if that was your bag) than we find ourselves catapulted into another period of self-denial – Lent. When we had less of everything it must have been far more painful to give things up. But these days giving things up is so fashionable, so all-the-rage that it has become a self-indulgent vanity, a sin in itself.

There are so many things to give up, so many candidates for renunciation, that one is spoilt for choice. Cocktails, social media, box sets, gel manicures, Ubers, mobiles – an endless list of things, many of which didn’t even exist a few years ago.

For instance dozens of senior Tories (we are told) have pledged to give up “single use plastics” such as disposable forks (I picture them eating salad with their hands) and already we are familiar with the sight of Cabinet members trooping into 10 Downing Street piously bearing a non-disposable coffee cup.

Unreasonably I always take a dislike to anyone who advertises their busy-ness by carrying coffee around. (Too rushed to boil a kettle at home are you?)

But back to Lent. A lot of people give up chocolate but this year many abstainers must have fallen at the first hurdle as the first day of Lent (Ash Wednesday) also happened to be Valentine’s Day when somehow chocs and romance go together like a horse and carriage. A day of penance and a day of passion – such exquisite torture – is positively thrilling. But then self-denial has always had a voluptuous flipside – the old pleasure/pain principle.

What’s more whipping up pancakes on Shrove Tuesday (in order to use up all your eggs, milk and flour before the Lenten crackdown) seems a bit ridiculous if you’d booked a pink fizz and candle-lit dinner for the following evening.

Proudly announcing what you have given up for Lent – rather than it being a private matter between you and the Almighty, like a hair shirt that is worn under your clothes and cannot be seen – is another aspect of this modern conceitedness. Though come to think of it, it’s not that modern. The fourthcentury Saint Simeon Stylites didn’t have to sit on top of a pillar for 37 years did he? What a show-off.

And these days his sedentary form of self-denial would be frowned on by the health lobby who would prefer that you give yourself a ritual thrashing in a gym and get up a good sweat.

Those of us who aren’t very religious now use Lent as a six-week diet plan, hoping we’ll end up with clearer skin and a sense of our superiority. But maybe instead of giving things up we should take things on?

It’s just a thought but as we are all so rushed and time-poor then giving our time is a far greater sacrifice than giving up KitKats. Nice idea? Of course the truth is I’ll probably do neither.