Give up Lent during Lent
Icon depicting the First Council of Nicaea. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Here are a three reasons you should give up Lent for Lent: History —the idea of giving up something for Lent comes from a few factors—the growth of infant baptism, the increase of Roman Catholic traditions, and silliness of the Catholic approach to meat. Allowing for some oversimplification, for the first few hundred years of church history baptism was generally practiced on what we now call Easter Sunday . Candidates for baptism would spend a period of preparation where they would fast, not shave, and in some cases not even bathe. While the exact length of this time varied (some say it was a few days, while other sources say 40 days), it would end at baptism, when the believer would be baptized, thus ending his fast. In some churches, the entire congregation would join the fast (but not the no bathing part), as a form of spiritual preparation for baptism Sunday . With the legaliza...