The meaning of Shrove Tuesday and the idea of self denial is easily overlooked in a time of great comfort

For as long as the oldest people alive can remember, it has been a happy tradition of making and flipping and, best of all, eating pancakes.

At a time of declining Christian influence, not so many young people will know that Pancake Tuesday is Shrove Tuesday, just as children often know more about Christmas presents than they do about the meaning of December 25.

The making of pancakes or other foods or the partaking of celebrations, such as in Brazil as pictured on the opposite page, in its famous Carnival celebrations, or Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) in New Orleans, was a final period of indulgence ahead of a lean spell of self denial and austerity.

In the letter, right, one of our regular reader contributors Colin Nevin questions whether fasting is in fact a necessary Christian tradition. Certainly some churches place greater store by it than others. But even if it is deemed a man-made ritual for which there is no religious justification, now more than ever there is a case to be made for periods of abstinence.

For all the many political and social problems in Northern Ireland, and the rest of the UK (and the Republic of Ireland, and across Europe and North America) we nonetheless live in the most pampered, affluent, materialistic time in history.

A higher percentage of families than ever take holidays abroad or run two cars or are able to eat out regularly.

Increasingly now people have the luxury of turning up their noses at jobs that only immigrants will do.

What sometimes is missing in this affluence and choice and consumption, even excess, is any sense of a good fortune in relation either to our ancestors or billions of people who live in poorer nations. As our long serialisation of 1738-39 News Letters showed, you do not have to go back far in history to reach a time in which most people lived a basic, poor lifestyle.

Self denial during a time such as Lent helps us better appreciate our plenty, and remind us of our good fortune.