Today is a week from Ash Wednesday, six days before Shrove Tuesday for the English, a day before Schmotziger Donnerstag (Greasy Thursday) for the Germans, and a few days after Quinquagesima Sunday, the last Sunday before Lent. Shrovetide starts roughly after the Christian Feasts of the Epiphany, the Epiphany marking the day when the Magi visited baby Jesus. Ash Wednesday then begins the days of fasting and self-denial for Lent. The forty days of Lent represent the forty days that Jesus wandered in the desert which lead into Easter, the day of Resurrection.
All of this marks the week leading up to Mardi Gras, a celebration where the Germans have sausages and sauerkraut for luck, the Lithuanians burn an effigy of winter, the women of Bourbon Street throw beads, and the samba music in Rio cranks up to full rhythmic energy for Carnival. Continue reading “The Gospel Tumbled Rhythmic in the Dryer”
According to Infoplease, one convincing explanation was provided by Joseph Boskin, a Professor of History at Boston University. He linked the practice to the Roman emperor Constantine, when a group of court jesters told Constantine that they didn’t get enough respect and could do a better job ruling the land. The emperor decided to appoint a jester named Kugel as king for the day, and Kugel took the opportunity to pass an edict created an annual absurdity day. When Boskin’s story was widely reported in 1983, it sounded convincing. But, as it turned out, he was just being feisty with an Associated Press reporter who wouldn’t take “I dunno” for an answer to “Where’d the tradition start, professor smartypants?” So as a joke he’d made up the story and used the reference to “kugel” because the reporter was in New York and he thought, well, everyone in New York eats kugel, don’t they?… When the AP fellow asked him to spell “kugel,” he wondered if the joke would be taken seriously. It was.