Give It Up

Alcohol, candy, cookies, gum, biting one’s nails, cracking one’s knuckles, cigarettes, sweets, pizza, driving too fast, coffee, snacking, staying out late, television, cards, comic books. What do these things have in common? Things we give up for Lent.

When I was a child my mother begged us to do something nice during the Lenten season rather than giving up something. “Be nice to your brothers, don’t fight with your sister, help mother around the house, fold the laundry, take out the trash, make your bed,” she would plead. I much preferred the grand gesture, to give something up and to give up something big.

The nuns at my elementary school would encourage us to think long and hard before promising Jesus we were making a sacrifice. Mother Superior was in the same “do something nice-camp” as my mother. The nuns would suggest things like: practice perfect penmanship every day during Lent, don’t talk during Chapel, pay attention to the Gospel, or say the Rosary daily. It was far more fun to announce to my fellow third graders on Ash Wednesday that I was giving up bubble gum and desserts and soda pop. That certainly trumped pious Mary Margaret’s Lenten Novena for the poor souls in purgatory – right? My good intentions usually lasted only a few days. I would forget, or succumb to temptation and the next thing I knew I was smacking gum and washing down Oreos with orange soda, and goodie-two-shoes Mary Margaret was still praying for those poor souls.

I really should have taken my mother’s suggestion about not fighting with my sister, a few cross words between siblings were easier to hide than a mouth full of cookie, a pile of Double-Bubble wrappers, and the tell-tale Orange Crush-mustache. Next year, I’d think, I’m going to give up something easy – like liver or lima beans!