A lent in which our good fortune is starkly apparent

Many children, and adults too, will have been delighted to have an excuse to tuck into pancakes.

Among the events to mark the date in the Province, Tourism Northern Ireland brought together hundreds of people in the Titanic Quarter to try to break a Guinness World Record for the most people flipping a pancake. Whether or not the record was broken will be revealed at a later date.

Fewer and fewer people probably pay much attention to the history behind Shrove Tuesday (when pancakes were made so that foods such as eggs and milk and sugar were used up), or are even aware that today is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of lent.

It is the six weeks in the run-up to Easter, similar in duration to the 40 days which Jesus spent fasting in the desert, and traditionally observed by Christians through prayer, penance and self denial.

There might now be widespread gorging of pancakes, but not so much of the abstention that is supposed to follow it.

Such a sacrifice hardly seems necessary in an age of plenty.

But even increasingly secular and affluent societies, which have relatively recent (in terms of human history) problems such as widespread obesity, could benefit from rituals that involve either denial or a pause in which to reflect and be thankful.

Muslims fast for a month during Ramadan and in the United States Thanksgiving (for the harvest) is as big a point in the calendar as Christmas.

If anything has underlined the perhaps precarious good fortune of Europe, the refugee crisis of the last year has done. Many millions of people are desperate to share in our peace and prosperity. And not just Syrians – growing numbers of Africans are prepared to risk their lives to cross the Mediterranean.

This, therefore, is arguably the first lent in many decades in which our relative good fortune has been so starkly apparent.