Lent and Shopping

We are smack dab in the middle of Lent, that wonderful season of giving things up, as in "I'm giving up blank for Lent." It used to be that there was no question what you gave up for this season, it was a given that everyone would fast for these 40 days. Which meant something like no food until the first star of the evening, a la Judaism, or one meal a day, in the Buddhist way. Then came Vatican II and everything changed, Catholicism became easy, and the only required days of fasting, I think, but don't quote me, were Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, although eating meat on Fridays was also a no-no. So now good Catholics give up something, and in my family that usually meant something food related, e.g. chocolate, meat, eating between meals... etc.

It seems to me, now that I think about it, other religions, spiritual practices have a similar idea. Fasting to incite clarity of mind, clarity of purpose. Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Native American Animism... those are the ones of which I can think, off the top of my head. There are probably more.

Now, I am not a good Catholic, being mostly lapsed in any practical sense, but I try every year to give something up, sometimes it is food in the traditional sense of fasting, or semi-traditional of avoiding chocolate, or sometimes else altogether. Like TV, or shopping. This year, I am giving up shopping, or maybe I should say 'limiting my shopping to necessary things,' because, well, I will have to spend money on some things.

Lent, boiled down, is a period of simplicity, of simplifying, of contemplation, a time for reduction of wants and desires, and a time to clean house, physically and mentally. Sure, I could enumerate my sins, and mortify my flesh in an attempt at atonement, or walk into the desert with only a camel-hair shirt, but in truth all I need to do is think. Think, every time that I want to buy something frivolous or extravagant, to myself, "I do not need that. I can be happy, and self-fulfilled without a new pair of pants."