KEY POINTS:
The supermarkets are already selling hot cross buns and Easter eggs, foods that are traditionally eaten only on Good Friday and Easter Saturday.
This is not surprising in a culture that finds it difficult to limit consumption of any product to just one day a year. Our culture has little interest in gastronomic constraint.
Lent, the 40 days prior to Easter, is a time when the Christian Church has emphasised constraint.
In Western Christianity, Lent lasts from Ash Wednesday until Holy Saturday. It is a solemn, preparatory time.
There are no flowers in church. The faithful are encouraged to pray, give to the needy and abstain from rich foods.
Curtailing the intake of calories may have originated for practical reasons. In the northern winter, food that had been stored the previous autumn was running out by March, or had to be used up before it perished. The joys of spring were not just the flowers popping up, but the arrival of fresh food.
The Lenten fast could be quite rigorous in times past. Socrates Scholasticus, writing from Constantinople in the early 4th century, reported that, in some places, all animal products were strictly forbidden, while others permitted fish and others ate only bread.
In some places, believers abstained from food for an entire day. In most places, the practice was to abstain from eating until the evening, when a small meal without meat or alcohol was eaten.
In the days of authoritarian church leadership, abstinence was enforced. It resulted in numerous methods being used to circumvent culinary prohibitions.
An elderly priest once told me with a twinkle in his eye that there were many and varied saints days in Lent - it being permissible to drink alcohol on such days.
Of course, as the Church slowly learned, enforced piety soon ceases to be piety at all.
But enforced piety was profitable. If the rich or unrestrained wanted to indulge, then dispensations were granted - for a fee of course. It is popularly believed that such monies built several churches, including the "Butter Tower" of the Rouen Cathedral - butter being one of the products prohibited in Lent.
Today, in the West, the practice of fasting is considerably relaxed. In the Roman Catholic Church, it is traditional to abstain from meat every Friday for the duration of Lent. On Ash Wednesday, it is customary to fast for the day, with no meat, eating only one full meal.
A number of Christians, Protestants included, give up meat, alcohol, sweets and other types of food during Lent.
Anglicans generally don't favour self-denial. We have preferred a theology that affirms the good things in life and our participation in them.
Instead of abstinence, Anglicans have prepared for Easter by trying to be generous towards others. This Lent, for example, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York encouraged their followers to "help to make our communities, local or global, clean and secure places of generosity".
Yet, at its best, the ancient admonition to fast for Lent invites Christians to question what we need and why.
Many New Zealanders go camping over the summer. They take what their car and trailer can carry and head off to a beachside campground or an isolated paddock. There, if the weather is kind, they relax for a week or two.
Prior to departure, campers have to ask what they need and why. The young daughter who fills a case with a dozen sets of clothes is gently instructed in the art of discerning between necessity and luxury.
Some campers deliberately stay away from the benefits of electrical power, in order to lessen the impact of modern technology. Campers become much more attuned to the environment. The ground underfoot, the weather forecast, the bugs and the sun play a much greater role in their daily activities.
Campers often find, in the absence of work pressures and usual avenues of entertainment, more time to talk with friends, go for walks, play with children and watch sunsets.
New Zealand society is in danger of losing the art and discipline of self-constraint. Whether it is the desire to drink to excess, eat until obese, or spend unrestrained, time and again our values of community, family, and individual well-being are compromised by our appetite for more. Do we control our appetites or do they control us? As I move around Auckland, it seems parties can't happen without alcohol, children can't be entertained without television and computers and adults can't feel successful without the latest and greatest products.
Like campers, we need to take time out. We need to pause and consider what we need as opposed to what we want and the social and physical costs of both. One way to do this is by observing a self-imposed period of going without. A Lenten fast can help us differentiate between what is a necessity and what is a luxury. It can help us consider what kind of possessions and power we want in our lives and the consequences of having more.
For those who practise self-constraint, there are other benefits. Our awareness of our land and climate and our impact upon them is enhanced. Our social relationships can also benefit. Alcohol in particular often distorts and impairs relationships.
Lastly, and maybe most importantly, we usually begin to feel better within ourselves, freer and happier.
Self-constraint does not impair; indeed, it can enhance our enjoyment and love of life. Self-constraint nourishes the soul.
* Glynn Cardy is vicar of St Matthew-in-the-City Anglican Church in Auckland.
