Ash Wed on Valentine's Day, Easter on April Fools Day

[47of74]

Something interesting about Ash Wednesday and Easter this year....

Quote

Church and state are about to collide on the calendar.

Ash Wednesday, when Christians are smudged with a reminder of death, falls on gushy, lovey Valentine's Day.

And Easter, the most important Christian observance, lands on April Fools' Day, when we need to be careful what to believe.

The two mashups have not happened together since 1945. Easter was most recently on April 1, or April Fools' Day, in 1956, but Ash Wednesday did not fall on Valentine's Day then because it was a leap year.

I wonder how much fundie loving there's gonna be on Valentine's Day due to it also being Valentine's Day?

[louisa05]

Did you mean due to it also being Ash Wednesday? 

In my experience, fundies and evangelicals do not acknowledge Ash Wednesday or Lent. So it will not be an issue for them. I actually got in trouble for making note of Ash Wednesday my first year of teaching in Christian school. 

Sucks for Mr. 05 and I as we met on Valentines Day, had our first date that day a year later, and are Catholic. We usually celebrate on that day. It is our 11/12 anniversary of those events this year. But we will be at Ash Wednesday mass instead. Bleh. 

[Georgiana]

3 minutes ago, louisa05 said:

Sucks for Mr. 05 and I as we met on Valentines Day, had our first date that day a year later, and are Catholic. We usually celebrate on that day. It is our 11/12 anniversary of those events this year. But we will be at Ash Wednesday mass instead. Bleh. 

I feel your pain.  Every year my birthday falls on a Wednesday, it is ALSO Ash Wednesday.  And my family refuses to celebrate due to fasting.  

[louisa05]

1 hour ago, Georgiana said:

I feel your pain.  Every year my birthday falls on a Wednesday, it is ALSO Ash Wednesday.  And my family refuses to celebrate due to fasting.  

Shhhhhh.........we're really bad at fasting. Mr. 05 just won't and my stomach doesn't allow me to. So we eat like normal on those days but do cut out meat/poultry. Health reasons is an official exemption from the church; but Mr. 05's stubbornness, not so much. 

[nvmbr02]

Ebil Catholic here too. We are actually traveling to South Korea on Valentine's Day/Ash Wednesday this year. So we wont be fasting or making it to Mass. I do usually fast and avoid meat and poultry on the appropriate days but I am not sure how we are going to handle that this year. My kids are somewhat picky eaters and the majority of the Korean food they like contain meat. Depending on what we have going on for each particular day we may or may not observe this year. At least with the kids. DH isn't Catholic (he was raised Lutheran). 

Thankfully it is just Ash Wednesday and 2 Fridays that will be an issue. I'll do the best that I can for myself. Thankfully I am not too picky. I do feel bad that it is a Sacrament year for my 8 year old so I feel I should be making a bigger effort.  Then again, my 14 year old has recently decided she "doesn't want to be a part of the Jesus cult" and the 12 year old has been skipping Mass for baseball practice so we clearly aren't good ebil Catholics,. 

[JMarie]

Catholics are "doing it wrong," according to fundies, so fundies don't fast.  There's probably a decent number of them who don't celebrate Easter, either, because of "pagan roots" or other such silliness.

[danvillebelle]

Unless you're Orthodox, then Easter (Pascha) is on April 8.     And we don't have Ash Wednesday, we have Forgiveness Sunday, and Lent starts the next day (Feb. 19).  

[GeoBQn]

On 1/15/2018 at 2:41 PM, Georgiana said:

I feel your pain.  Every year my birthday falls on a Wednesday, it is ALSO Ash Wednesday.  And my family refuses to celebrate due to fasting.  

I have a similar situation.  My birthday is in early April, so every 2 or 3 years it falls during Passover.  We can't go out to dinner, and birthday cake is less exciting when it is made of Manischewitz matzah meal brownie mix.

[47of74]

1 minute ago, GeoBQn said:

I have a similar situation.  My birthday is in early April, so every 2 or 3 years it falls during Passover.  We can't go out to dinner, and birthday cake is less exciting when it is made of Manischewitz matzah meal brownie mix.

And every once in a great while St. Patrick's Day occurs within Holy Week so the church moves its celebration to another day.  It happened in 1940 and 2008.  It'll next occur in the year 2160.