Lent or Lenten Season.

In the ancient solar fables it was taught that the persecutions to
which the incarnate Saviours were subjected while passing through the
dominion of God Sol as Lord of Evil, raged with greatest fury during
the forty days preceding the festival of Easter, which period,
beginning when the days were perceptibly lengthening, was called Lent,
or the Lenten season. It was during this season that the votaries of
the ancient religion were taught to manifest their sympathy for the
Saviour in his imaginary conflict with the Devil by abstaining from all
festivities, and by fasting and prayer; and, as that was the season in
which the flocks and herds were poor in flesh, while the seas and
rivers abounded with fish in good condition, the ancient priests,
making a virtue of necessity, enjoined a diet principally of fish, and
for that reason placed the constellation Pisces at the point in the
Zodiac in which the Lenten season anciently began; which, without
regard to the day of the week, was always observed on the 15th day of
February, the name of that month having been derived from the Februa,
or feast of purification and expiation of the old Roman calendar.

At the council of Nice the Lenten season was made to begin on the
fourth day of the week, and in reference to the ancient custom of the
more devout sprinkling ashes upon their heads at the feast of the
Februa, it is called Ash Wednesday.

Hence we see that all years in which Ash Wednesday does not come on the
15th of February, the Lenten season must necessarily contain a greater
or lesser number than the original assignment of forty days.