Lenten fast

Diarmuid Ó Giolláin, professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, USA, said St Patrick's Day has always been marked not only because it was a celebration of the patron saint but also because a dispensation allowed the Lenten fast to be broken - meat to be eaten and alcohol drunk - whilst Christians everywhere else were fasting.

In her book Seasonal Europe Dishes, Elizabeth Luard writes: “Eggs, forbidden food during the strict Lenten fast, play a central part in Easter rituals all over Europe – in part because eggs have long been a talisman of rebirth long before Christianity appropriated the symbolism, but not least because after the Lenten fast there were plenty of eggs around.”

Last treat before the Lenten fast begins.

It’s the soup that breaks the Lenten fast, and that you eat when you get home from the Saturday-night vigil Mass, which can be at 3 in the morning if the bearded man in the tall black hat and the long robe, the one with the incense, takes you that far into the liturgy, which he sure as shoe leather does.

A month and a half ago, I decided to do a Lenten fast of a different sort, one involving my daily fixes of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.