I’m amazed that so many areas of the States don’t see this. I’m never aware it’s ash Wednesday until the smudges on foreheads start popping up all over the place though I have noticed a decided decrease in recent years.

Where I live, it’s quite popular to do it on your lunch hour and some seem to do it before work too. State workers particularly run over to a church by the Empire State Plaza on their lunch and “get it out of the way” so they don’t have to after work. I’m sure they don’t mind the excuse for a long lunch either. (How’s that for devotion?)

Of course, NY’s very highly Catholic. Lot of Irish, French and Italians around these parts.

stogoe, you amaze me even more to hear of a Dutch Reformed church doing this. My fundy nut of a mother was Dutch Reformed and, man, she hated Catholics. My father had to convert to marry her which lead to her and my French grandmother engaged in war the whole 20 years of her marriage. Every Ash Wednesday, she’d mutter heathens at every ash ridden forehead she saw, which as I said is quite a lot around these parts.

I’m glad she died without ever knowing that our father did sneak us off to mass once. At least to my knowledge, she never found out. He didn’t even have to tell us kids, don’t tell your mother. We weren’t exactly itching to.

It would have to be a very homogeneous non-Catholic area for this to be unknown.

Oh, it’s certainly not limited to catholics any more. My parents’ Dutch Reformed Megachurch does the whole smudge thing now, though they did start up with it after I left their ranks.

At last you stumble out with the admission that you think it’s “pretty much meaningless” (every so-called Christian I know would laugh in your face, by the way), apart from having “some relation to Christ.” Yet even then, your description of “Christ” differs from every mainstream “Christian” interpretation I’ve ever heard.

Do not try to tell other people that their interpretations are wrong if you can’t defend your own – or even define them. That’s what makes your sneers about others’ “logical errors” so hilarious, though I doubt you meant to be funny.

Again, Ron: what are you? I’m leaning toward a precise definition as “clueless yet pompous trolling git.”

I suppose it means they have some relation to Christ…

You can’t even give a definition that isn’t so vague that it is meaningless.

Anytime you apply a label to a group of people it only means what someone says the definition of the label is.

No shit Sherlock, do you have a point, or are you pointless as usual?

Well, I suppose “black” means someone with a high degree of melanin in their skin. Other than that it’s pretty much a meaningless label. Is Hemant black? He clearly has a high degree of melanin in his skin.

Yeah, “Christian” is in many ways a meaningless label. I suppose it means they have some relation to Christ, but other than that it’s pretty much meaningless.

Seriously, you guys claim to be rational clear thinkers? Anytime you apply a label to a group of people it only means what someone says the definition of the label is.

I’d call you idiots but that’s simply just another label.

Hell could be a slur to an educated Christian in the sense that the definition of “hell” has changed over the time the Bible was written.

Atheists seem to want to say “Oh Christians believe in hell.” The fact is that this is untrue. First what is hell? Is it the place of the dead or a place of eternal torment?

The fact that you immediately jumped to the illogical assumption that since I tried to explain the theology of “hell” to you that I must be Christian shows the exact stereotypical behavior that I’m trying to demonstrate.

Perhaps you’re not as “rational” and logical as you think you are.

Christian: someone who is honest, kind, trustworthy, selfless, cares about their fellow man, and believes that a heavenly afterlife awaits those that repent and believe Christ died for their sins.

Non-Christian: someone who is honest, kind, trustworthy, selfless, cares about their fellow man, but doesn’t believe that an afterlife awaits only those that repent and believe Christ died for their sins.

P.S., not all Christians live up to the first part of the definition… neither do the non-Christians.