If you’re hankering for fish, prepare to fight a crowd, today and every Friday for the next 40 days. Forgetting it was Ash Wednesday — how I forgot after 8+ years spent in parochial school is admittedly inexplicable — I dropped in Big Shucks at lunchtime for a dozen oysters and a diet Coke. I was met with long lines and a dining room chock full-a folks bearing the telltale forehead ash. Why were they all at Big Shucks? Because in the name of sacrifice, Catholics (and some other Christians) are obligated to forego red meat. From what I learned during my years at St. Pius, we were also supposed to give up in-between meal snacking and consume only one full meal (an easygoing form of fasting, I suppose) on Ash Wednesday and again on Good Friday.
Here’s the obvious weirdness of the whole thing as I see it, and the part that stumps me as I’m fighting the crowd at the cocktail sauce counter — what part of ordering up eight-pound Summer Platters and fried shrimp baskets equals sacrifice?
By the way, the oysters are delish right now.
