give up the grudge

So, I heard tomorrow was Lent. Now, not being Catholic, I wouldn't have known this, had one of my devoutly Catholic Facebook acquaintances not smugly announced he would be giving up Facebook for the entirety of Lent, and that he could henceforth only be reached via snail mail, carrier pigeon, or whimsically punctuated columns of white smoke.

While I can't say that I'm disappointed that my main page feed will no longer showcase his hilariously inane Vatican news updates, and grossly politically incorrect theories on the "perfect submissive wife," I was raised protestant, so the whole concept of Lent has always been of great curiosity to me. At first, it was my understanding that its observers were simply to take an aspect of their lives and 'fast' in the same way the Christ fasted in the desert for 40 days. The first ever example I can ever remember of Lent was a friend who gave up pickles. "But I really like pickles!" she insisted. I was twelve at the time, and also loved pickles. She was such a martyr.