The western countries start Lent on Ash Wednesday and it lasts until Easter Sunday. Lent is a time of fasting and one might wonder what Germans are ready to abstain from. When asked they say that they could for a time do without chocolate, meat or particular products, alcohol or TV.
Be it religious or health motivations – the fact is, fasting is firmly anchored in many cultures and religions. Even non-religious people exercise abstinence and for some it goes with some surprising experience. In so called wellness parlours, visitors are offered guided fasting treatments and they share how they do not feel hungry, how they perceive their body being “cleaned up” and how they get to feel free and easy.
In behavioural biology hunger initiates so called appetentive behaviour, meaning the hungry individual gets to move around, roaming the place, searching for food. Physiology enables this behaviour, encourages it even by release of specific hormones and endorphines. It also promotes general activity by increase of blood sugar and release of adrenalin. The individual gets to feel strong and powerful, despite and at the same time due to its hunger. In Christianity, in Islam and in Judaism times of fasting are known to go with high religious holidays. Gandhi believed that fasting releases immense power. Only in Buddhism where instead of occasional fasting, permanent moderation is admonished.
So in Lent we abstain form chocolate, sweets, alcohol, nicotine, caffein, car driving, using the cell phone, TV. Almost any abstinence that pains a little is fasting, but the question remains: Why do so?
In an interview for the German TV programme ZDF, Bishop Wolfgang Huber of the Protestant Church in Germany (EKD) says: “It is this collecting of one’s thoughts and by that opening oneself for the great secret of faith. That is the actual sense of fasting. And it goes with wonderful concomitants: One becomes free, easy and open.” If only the abstinence were not so hard. This hard sacrifice explains the inventiveness of Christian monks back in the past in eluding strict fasting rules. Among them the Brezel: this beautifully designed salt flavoured yeast pastry invented in the 7th century was a fastng pastry. The camouflage lies in the shape: It was meant to remind of the folded arms of a monk. Also the Swabian Maultasche. The legend has it that back then the forbidden meat was simply hidden in a pasty cover.
Be it religious motivated or not, the anthropologist Prof. Christoph Wulf of the Freie Universität Berlin explains the occasional will to abstain in this way: “Animals cannot say ‘no’. If you give food to an animal that is hungry, it will eat. Humans have the ability to say ‘no’. And that is the very important ability of humans. That is why we can plan, set goals and pursue those by abstaining from immediately satisfying a need.”
The freedom to say “no”. It is this freedom and consciously making use of it, even if only for a while, that frees us and helps us go back to the essentials of life.