Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder

…and the belly pangs stronger

I grew up in a Catholic household. I definitely tried my hardest to rebel against my Catholic shackles, snogging boys in the back of their cars while I was supposed to be at netball practice. It might have been my highly-strung parents, or my terrible teeth plied into braces until I was eighteen but I was never that successful at romantic misdemeanour; I was far too much of a late bloomer to hold any God-given-guilt for teenage frissons. I did my confirmation like a gawky giant at sixteen with a bunch of primary school kids — even when I wasn’t sure what I was confirming. I did it to keep my Italian late grandmother happy.

When I think about church, Catholicism and guilt, I think mostly about food. My mother would bribe us to church each Sunday with the promise that we could ‘leave after communion’. We’d line up, one arm over the shoulder for our blessings. I remember her, handbag over her shoulder, swigging from the chalice before giving us the signal. A raised eyebrow. Her mouth moving without sound as she turned her back on the priest: “Go now!” she would mouth in exaggerated, silent exaltation. It felt utterly rebellious. We were the Irish exit-ers of do-gooding, the parish runaways. We’d scoot out the back of the pews, swerve the bumper-to-bumper car park system, and avoid awkward end of mass conversations. We’d make our getaway to attend to urgent business: free rein on whichever cakes we chose from Sainsbury’s.

To me, the smell of frankincense and candle wax is synonymous with a sliver of sponge in a silver cupcake case with white icing. The icing rock-hard; a thick wedge of plasticky sugar firmly set into serrated edges from the muffin case, even after you peeled away the foil. Uniform factory-shaped flowers on top or rice paper stickers of Mr. Men and Little Miss. I’ve looked for them in every supermarket bakery for the past twelve years. They’re nowhere to be seen in this format anymore. Yet, every time I walk into a church now, I can still taste them.

Food often featured in the sermons too. Not only, in the form of the wafers and wine (our Sunday breakfast; we could never get out of bed early enough to eat beforehand — no wonder the treats afterwards tasted so sweet). The priest loved to ask what people had for a given meal and then use it to parallel the message of the word in the homily. Let’s imagine it’s cereal. Somehow, he’d analogise that the Jesus was the Coco Pops, the Lord was the milk pouring into all our lives, and the Holy Spirit? Yes you guessed it: the magical chocolate milk transition. “You only get the Coco Pops experience when the Trinity show up together. But you can’t always see them at work.” It’s tenuous, I know. Yet so is most of Catholism.

So, whilst I have my own issues with my Catholic upbringing, I have not turned my back on faith. I have found different forms of spirituality later in life. And in doing so I’ve become grateful for a few things that Catholicism gave me. One thing I am actually grateful for with this religious cult? Lent.

My catholic upbringing taught me the gift (previously known as the curse) of abstinence. From the age of about six or seven, I exercised my ability to cut out certain food groups or treats. Chocolate. Sweets. Crisps. Fizzy drinks. One year I tried to give up going to church. (It didn’t work, sadly). I didn’t view it as punishment, it felt oddly fun. A baptism of adulthood, I was graced to participate in this strange, clandestine ritual — part of the big-person tribe. Finding fellow Catholics at a Church of England school and discussing ‘what you were going to give up for Lent’ felt the same as being at a music festival and realising you’re on the same drugs as someone just as the headline act appears — Sorry God (and parents) if you’re reading this.

From a terrifyingly young age, I was addicted to ‘doing the hard thing’ and if not at least, the different thing. Giving up chocolate for your girly sleepover at ten years old? That was the ultimate sign of being a bad-ass, disciplined bitch. Hallelujah. (Honestly what a strange child I was). Ten-year-old me always liked to stand out from the crowd (I grew out of that pretty quickly with pubescent-induced imposter syndrome. It ravaged me until — well, sometimes now, actually).

So what did Lent teach me? I can be holier than thou? No. Did I stick to it because Jesus did? Or because I was afraid of what the Lord might think if I broke it? Nope. Did giving things up make me reflect? Not at all. I was determined, headstrong. I liked proving to myself that I could do things. I never pondered the meaning of existence on account of the Lord.

In our modern world, fasting doesn’t do much for reflection. Most women live their lives constantly fasting. And look where that has got us. I wasn’t sitting in calorie-deficit in the desert for forty days and night, wasting away. Yet sometimes I probably wanted it to. At seventeen (and beyond) I relished the opportunity to exercise Lent, masking unhealthy diet culture as religious tradition. It didn't always work. I said no to the KitKat at the end of a sports match, got an ego boost out of it, and then usually came home and devoured three slices of buttered toast instead. The Lord may work in mysterious ways, but my brain (and belly) does not.

The way I used to engorge myself with chocolate for breakfast on Easter Sunday was, quite frankly, unhinged. An addict taking my first hit in a while, I would delight in a Creme Egg for breakfast, a Lindor chaser each courses of the Easter Sunday spread. So many Catholics I know still do the same. I’m sure this religious-led-breaking-fast-binge is partly responsible for the way in which I once ate three large easter eggs in a single sitting behind the closed doors of my university bedroom, and then forced myself on a sixteen kilometre run the next day as pure punishment. In the biblical words of Usher: this is my confession.

You name it, I’ve given it up. I’ve gone to the extremes: alcohol, sugar, booze, all the processed foods. I’ve even ‘taken up’ things (mostly unhealthy exercise regimes) like squat challenges, plank challenges, or running challenges with a set number of kilometres per week. I don’t look back on my religious upbringing with hate, yet I also don’t look back and think: wow, I really nailed life in 2006 because I didn’t eat the salt and vinegar Discos until after April 18th. So after over thirty years of abstinence, I no longer participate in Lent. I don’t see the need to place restriction on myself anymore. I give up giving things up. I have found knowing I can abstain is reason enough not to. What’s the point? Where’s the joy? And therapy is probably a more worthy time investment anyway.

I would have turned out disciplined, hard-working, and a bit of a control-freak regardless — Lent was just the opportunity for me to exercise it. If it wasn’t Lent, I would have found something else. Although I can sit here and say, I have never broken a single forty-day undertaking. Am I proud of that? Yeah, maybe. I’m not sure why? Clearly some part of my Catholic upbringing stuck. But the real gift of Lent — much like my mother pioneering our evangelical escape artistry — was in witnessing the joyful acts of rebellion in those around me.

My nonna gave up chocolate every year without fail. And without fail, she’d find a new way round it. A dusting atop a cappuccino; a hidden chip in an unsuspecting muffin; a hand rummaging in a pick ‘n’ mix bag and in the dark of the cinema with secret delight when picking up a chocolate raisin instead of a foam banana. Cacao was hiding everywhere in plain sight. She didn’t put up walls. There was limited resistance. Her way of living in general wasn’t to abstain or sacrifice, it was to find the hilarity and the good story in every situation.

Easter baking with us as kids, she’d scoop a finger into the bowl of melted chocolate and raise it to her lips as I’d point out:

“Nonna! You can’t eat that you’ve given up chocolate for lent!” (Honestly — I was quite the Hermione Granger.)

“Oh!? So I have!” She’d say. “Well, I just needed to check it was the right temperature. I’m sure the man upstairs won’t mind. I’ll chat to him. Now, just you let that be our little secret.” And she’d shoot me a wink.

My favourite story is the pear and chocolate pavlova. Decorating it with grated Dairy Milk, she tucked in whole-heartedly, despite her preordained refrain via the church. When called out by her own offspring that she was ingesting chocolate, she offered, risibly calm:

“Oh! So it is! Well it doesn’t count if it’s grated, does it?”

She’d often pop chocolate-laden forkfuls into her mouth on autopilot. Floating through the clouds of life with only the taste on her tongue and the joy in the specific moment rendering her back to Catholic reality. Shocked by the sweetness, she would raise her hands to her mouth aghast. She’d forgive herself; it not only brought her joy in that moment, but brought great hilarity to those sat around the table. Now, tears rolling down our cheeks, we laugh as we remember this moment each year when Spring rolls round again.

A magical maverick who didn’t break rules; she bent them. Subtly. Gently. Loosening the edges and softening the world for us all to enjoy life little more. Cruising through the clouds on family-focused autopilot. One of my biggest abstinences now? Her. She was the person who taught me how to tell stories, to love words, to generally become hungry for life. She showed me how to exist. Forgetting the sacrifice, finding the joy. We could all try living a little more like her.

You don’t need to prove to God, yourself, or anyone else that you can give things up, it’ll only make the belly pangs stronger. Abstain from abstaining. So go ahead today and start practicing whatever your own form of evangelical escape artistry is. Sip from the chalice of gentle rebellion. Eat the chocolate all year round. God will forgive you. And if you’re still not sure? Try grating it. Somehow, it might make it all better.