Lent Comes To A Close [OPINION]

The Lenten Season for Christians comes to a close this weekend with the celebration of Easter.

Throughout my life, Lent was a time to "give up" a luxury item, a favorite food, a bad habit or anything else you feel would be meaningful enough to show that you love Jesus. One of the "rules" of Lent (as I was taught) was to give up meat on Fridays all through lent.

That one always struck me as strange: instead of meat, we get to eat crawfish and shrimp and crabs and fish!! This isn't a sacrifice, I love seafood!

Now that I am older and more inquisitive, I have learned that the Catholic law of Abstinence requires people practicing the faith to abstain from meat on certain days during Lent, including Fridays, the day of the week that Jesus died. So, with meat off of the menu, the logical thing for protein would be seafood, which, of course, is plentiful around these parts.

So today, while hanging out with a friend who (I assume) is Catholic (or was at least raised Catholic), I was treated to fried fish (fresh from the pond!), fried shrimp, and crawfish etouffee'!

One of my favorite memories of Good Friday would be from the times we spent with my mom's family in Forked Island. My aunt and uncle had a camp out there, and we'd fish all day (and sometimes run the crawfish traps) and have a big feast with all of my mom's family present.  Good times, indeed.

I hope that you got to spend some quality time with friends and family today, whether it be at a crawfish boil or fish fry, or even at a delicious steakhouse. Making memories with (and for) those children is important!