A Lenten festivus for the rest of us

For anyone unaware, we’re currently making our way through the Christian season of Lent, a period commonly associated in the popular imagination with affluent suburbanites who nobly commit themselves to exorcising Oreos from their diet for about 40 days each spring.

It’s one of those weird niche holidays that seems to exist only parallel to our mass culture — like Boxing Day, Norwegian Constitution Day and various religious holidays. Also Kwanzaa.

But in the spirit of our long-standing human tradition of cultural co-optation, how about we secularize and assimilate Lent a bit? We don’t have to ruin it for practitioners, just make it more accessible.

I’m thinking something along the lines of what secular America has done to Christmas (and what early Christians did to the winter celebration of the birth of the Roman sun god).

And maybe our botched adaptation of Easter can be a cautionary tale. Secular Christmas is a little garish, but it holds onto some useful love and generosity from its sacred equivalent. It’s a built-in period for affirming bonds of family and extending goodwill into the world in an intentional way. (Secular Easter is just an opportunity for candy and traumatizing anthropomorphisms.)

Two questions you might be asking: Why draw so heavily on Christian tradition if our nation has so many other traditions? Also: Does America truly need a chance to give up soda or cheese biscuits for a month and a half?

Well if we’re going to have a shared culture based on something besides jingoism, self-gratification and Lady Gaga, this is our best bet. And as a nation we don’t know enough about any other traditions to adopt them without butchering them.

As for the second question, Lenten sacrifice can be a lot more than just a short-term New Year’s resolution. The original tradition is one of sustained fasting (much like strong traditions of fasting in Judaism and Islam), which tends to demand a little more willpower than the still painstaking switch from fried to grilled at KFC.

And many groups today use Lent as a time for reflection on the individual and community level, effectively assessing and reshaping the collective identity of the group to reorient it in relation to the world.

So instead of the individualized self-improvement of New Year’s resolutions, Lent can be and often is more about self-discipline and introspection. And who couldn’t use a little more of those in their lives?

Let’s be honest: we’re animals. We’re products of our circumstances. Impulse control and critical self-reflection are skills — just like driving, shooting or caring — that must be endlessly honed and practiced.

They also happen to be essential for a healthy society, and some regular exercise with them might help mitigate the obesity, political polarization, violence and sexual assault that happen to be systemic in our society.

Worth a try? If I were us, I’d be ready to try anything.