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6 unusual facts about Ash Wednesday


Burial of the Sardine

The "Burial of the Sardine" during carnival is celebrated on Ash Wednesday and is a symbolical burial of the past to allow society to be reborn, transformed and with new vigour.

Cournonterral

The festival has taken place in Cournonterral every Ash Wednesday since 1346.

Nadur Carnival

Besides the religious feast of St. Peter & St. Paul, known locally as "L-Imnarja" held on the 29th June and which lasts a whole week, Nadur is also famous for its annual revelry held on the 5 days preceding Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent.

Nicholas Shaxton

From inquiries made at Cambridge he learned that the vice-chancellor had censured two points in a sermon which Shaxton had preached on Ash Wednesday: first, that it was wrong to assert publicly that there was no Purgatory, but not damnable to think so; and, secondly, that no man could be chaste by prayers or fasting unless God made him so.

Sacred ashes

In Christianity, on Ash Wednesday, ashes of burnt palm leaves and fronds left over from Palm Sunday, mixed with olive oil, are applied in a cross-form on the forehead of the believer as a reminder of his inevitable physical death, with the intonation: "Dust thou art, and to dust will return" from Genesis 3:19 in the Old Testament.

São Matias, Goa

The Potekar festival is celebrated across the island for three days before the start of Lent/Ash Wednesday, where local youths wear home made masks, costumes and cow bells, venturing around the village, receiving and demanding snacks and drinks from locals, and have licence to frighten the village children.


Carnival of Madeira

The Carnival of Madeira (Carnaval in Portuguese) is an annual festival held forty days before Easter, that ends on Shrove Tuesday (called Fat Tuesday in Madeira - Terça-feira Gorda in Portuguese) the day before Ash Wednesday (first day of Lent).

Dülkener Schöppenmarkt

The Schöppenmarkt takes place on Ash Wednesday following carnival from 8.00 in the morning until 8.00 in the evening in the center of the once independent City of Dülken – today forming part of the city of Viersen.

Juan Manuel Echavarría

The title of these videos, Bocas de Ceniza, is what the conquistadors called the mouth of the Magdalena River because of the day of its discovery: Ash Wednesday.

Rosenmontag

Rosenmontag (Rose Monday) is the highlight of the German "Karneval" (carnival), and is on the Shrove Monday before Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent.


see also

Border Protection, Anti-terrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005

On Ash Wednesday, 2006, Cardinal Mahony announced that he would order the clergy and laity of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to ignore H.R. 4437 if it were to become law.

Judith Quiney

In 1616, the period in which marriages were banned without dispensation from the church, including Ash Wednesday and Lent, started on 23 January, Septuagesima Sunday and ended on 7 April, the Sunday after Easter.