Ash Wednesday is my favorite

[penmage]

I love Ash Wednesday because I always forget it’s Ash Wednesday.

And then I see people with black crosses and smudges on their forehead, and every single year, without fail, I am baffled anew. What is going on? Why do so many people have dirty foreheads? It doesn’t make any sense! The only thing that can possibly explain it is mass possession. That, or alien invasion. One of the two.

I always convince myself of this before remembering the date.

And that’s why I love Ash Wednesday. It’s the one day a year when I really, truly, actually am convinced that aliens have invaded.

Comments

[esc-key.livejournal.com]

I forgot to go this morning. I'm a terrible person. I got into work and Bossman had his ashes. D'oh. I don't go to church a lot. But I used to always go on Ash Wednesday, I think because it's one holy day that Catholics have mostly to themselves. ..And obviously I want to look like an alien.

Once when I was in school (I went to Catholic school), the priest giving out ashes actually spilled them on me, so I had ashes all on my (white button down) shirt and uniform. It looked like I had been sweeping a chimney.

[arib.livejournal.com]

I like Ash Wednesday because for one day a year, it's as easy to spot religiously observant Christians/Catholics as it is to spot frum Jews. It's interesting.

(oddly, nobody at work has any ashes on them)

[hookncrook.livejournal.com]

I have the same experience every year too. I can't figure out what the dirty marks on people's forheads are!

[demon-mistress.livejournal.com]

i sometimes go through that. in my case, however, there's no excuse, since i spent 9 years getting those same ashes stuck onto my own forehead...

[npkedit.livejournal.com]

LOL! The first time I noticed it was my first year in college. I couldn't figure out why everyone had dirt on their heads until I remembered it was Ash Wednesday. Until that time, I'd always spent most of the day in yeshiva and the rest of it in a neighborhood that was almost all Jewish. Ash Wednesday was one of those things in theory that I never saw in practice.

[fshk.livejournal.com]

Heh.

I grew up as the token non-Catholic kid in a predominantly Catholic community (my neighborhood was pretty much all Irish and Italian until I got to high school) so I always felt a little left out on Ash Wednesday, although I suspect I also would have felt weird walking around with ashes on my forehead all day, too.

I never would have known it's Ash Wednesday. Not many Catholics in this corner of Brooklyn. I didn't know yesterday was Mardi Gras until some woman on stilts in the West Village told me so.

[gimmelgirl.livejournal.com]

I giggled a little bit when I saw an observant Catholic woman from HR at JTS today, Celtic cross, ashes, and all.

[verviana.livejournal.com]

The first time I learned about Ash Wednesday was when I was seventeen and working at a deli, and this lady came in for coffee and I was like, "Here's your change! Oh, by the way, you have something on your forehead."

[littlelotte.livejournal.com]

I'm in Michigan and we have a lot of Polish people...it's impossible not to know when it's Fat Tuesday because all anybody talks about all day are paczkis (pronounced poon-chkeys).

[littlelotte.livejournal.com]

*giggles* I guess one of our servers tonight went up to our assistant manager and told her, "The people at Table 1 all have dirt on their faces, but I don't know how to tell them! How would you handle it?"--at which point, of course, our AM explained Ash Wednesday to her.