IN ENGLAND PEOPLE STILL ASSOCIATE LENT WITH FASTING BUT THE PURPOSE IS FOR MATERIALISTIC REASONS

Note what professor Ian Robinson, author of the most important book from CUP on the origins of modern English with respect to Cranmer et al says about Lent today:

Dear Peter,
Thanks very much for your exposition of the Lenten Collect. I discover to my surprise that there is a secular Lent as well as a secular Christmas. BBC Ceefax reports that more than half the women in England intend to give up chocolate for Lent and e.g. a large number of families intend to give up takeaway meals. (Whether the chocolate and takeaway industries suffer any actual loss of trade is not reported.) But this is entirely secular. One of the ex-building societies tells us we can save £300 during lent by cutting out expensive foods. But there is no suggestion of any spiritual intent, nor yet that the money saved should go anywhere but reducing credit-card debt. All the same, I am surprised that apparently so many people do still associate Lent with fasting. Opportunities to explain what it is really all about ... if we knew how to take them. What a pity your homilies can't be pinned up in the supermarkets ...
---Ian