Dear Cincinnati,
In my most recent correspondence, I attempted to explain to you some of the customs of our Mardi Gras. By the time you receive this, that date of revelry will have since passed.
My liver is exhausted just thinking about it.
As I was catching my breath recently over a bowl of Old Sober, it occurred to me that Carnival, like football season, delivers upon this city’s denizens a curious sort of Southern amnesia. As it nears, it cannot come fast enough. Once it arrives, it feels as if it might never end.
He who said one can never get enough of a good thing clearly never spent a Fat Tuesday pleading for coconuts at the circle formerly known as Lee.
Thank goodness, then, for the merciful moderation of Lent, that hallowed, solemn season invented by our forebears to detoxify our minds and spirits in preparation of Jazz Fest.
Or so I am told. I could very well be wrong on that account.
For you, I am sure, Lent is a time of reflection and sacrifice. It is much the same here, but it is in addition a time of recuperation and great water retention, the latter being owed to the weekly fried catfish feasts we like to pretend prove our piety.
As with most things, New Orleanians have a way of making even abstinence enjoyable – or at least not as unenjoyable as it might otherwise be.
The deprivation all starts, of course, the day after Mardi Gras, on Ash Wednesday, a time of fasting, repentance and the administration of ashes to the foreheads of the faithful to remind them of their mortality. This year, Ash Wednesday also happens to fall on Valentine’s Day, which must be a blow to the folks at Elmer’s Candy but an undeniable godsend to absent-minded and skinflinted Romeos.
One of my favorite of our relatively recent Lenten traditions is the administration of drive-through ashes. I wish I could claim New Orleans invented that now-commonplace concept. If I had the energy, perhaps I could. Such a lassaiz-faire display of faith feels very much as if it would have bubbled up organically through the peat on which the Big Easy is so uneasily perched.
Alas, in the cursory-est possible search of old newspapers, the earliest reference I could find to “drive-through ashes” was in 1988 Philadelphia, reinforcing my appreciation for the inhabitants of that cheesesteak-scented city.
Allow me to pause here for a caveat: I realize the fashion today is to spell it “drive-thru,” in apparent deference to Associated Press style and Ronald McDonald. To me, it is a reflection of willful linguistic ignorance for which I have no patience and therefore did not stoop to search.
But even if New Orleans is not the only place in the United States to honor the ash-and-dash culture, we are almost assuredly the only one in which you can get ashes and a neon-tinted frozen daiquiri without once fully extending your knees.
At any rate, we now enter the Lenten season, our foreheads besmudged, our eyes bleary and our intentions focused on spiritual self-improvement. To that end, the tradition here, as in so many other parts of Christendom, is to abstain from something substantive in an effort to bring us closer to God.
You know, important things. Like chocolate, Popeyes or coffee.
As you might surmise upon reading that above list, this city can be a generally grumpier place during Lent. I suppose that means we are doing it correctly. If my 12 years of Catholic school education in New Orleans taught me anything, it is this: If religion is painless, you are probably not trying hard enough.
If my subsequent decades in the city have taught me anything else, it is that the same goes for sinning.
I cannot be certain, but I suspect New Orleans wouldn’t weather the 40 days of Lent as well as it does if not for Sundays, which bring a weekly, Church-sanctioned reprieve in which the faithful are given permission to ignore their Lenten promises to their god and themselves.
Also known as “Cheat Sundays,” they are to me a sign of mercy from the Holy See. Clearly, His Holiness is well aware of the medical and psychic dangers of Popeyes withdrawal.
In fact, today being Sunday, I think I am going to go pour myself a stiff tumbler of Popeyes now.
Until next time …
Cheers, New Orleans
P.S. – I recently had some of your Cincinnati chili. Unlike others here, I found it tasty and hearty. You might be interested to know we have a similar dish here, minus the cinnamon. We call it “spaghetti sauce.”
