I stopped attending church on a regular basis almost eight years ago, but the various minutiae of my evangelical Christian upbringing have not faded from my memory at all. So when I joined the Unitarian Universalist church about six months ago (think Buddhists who got trapped at a Benny Hinn revival weekend), I was very curious to see how we would handle the traditional church calendar, if at all. For example, our observance of the Christmas season predictably favored the more pagan elements, of which there are more than I thought, and thus was more of a three-week Winter Solstice celebration with a light sprinkling of Baby Jesus and a menorah stashed nonchalantly in a corner. Therefore, I can only assume that Easter - an unimpeachably Christian holiday - will come and go in a flurry of egg hunts and hymns to nature, but as the observance of Lent doesn't necessarily connote any manner of religious attachment, I've wondered whether or not anyone in my congregation finds such a thing personally meaningful.

You see, my best friend gave up beef for Lent. Kind of. Which I think is refreshing, as for the most part he's never cared much for religion and thus it's usually me who's given to unpredictably frantic outbursts of religious fervor, so it's nice to pass the torch along. The fact that his wife is a lapsed Catholic - very, very lapsed - completes the scenario quite elegantly. As for me, even before I left the Christian church I would use this time of the year to make some flip remark about how I'd given up Lent for Lent. Now I just say that I've given up crystal meth, but only until Easter - then West Hollywood, here I come! And to the surprise of exactly no one, this particular brand of antipathy is fairly common among my fellow church members.

So I've come to this conclusion: Unitarians don't do Lent. We do Happy Hour.

Learn more about this author, Trevor Watkin.
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