As Lent begins this week, I thought we’d take a look at Ash Wednesday, first from the etymology, and then of course as a holy day. We’re going to start with the Wednesday part…and in fact, this will launch a mini-series looking at the days of the week. (Out of order, I know. But hey, we take inspiration however it strikes!)
Wednesday has been the name for the fourth day of the week since Middle and Old English, with various spellings. Its earliest variation is Wodnesdaeg, literally “Woden’s Day.” Woden being the Old English form of Odin. It’s interesting to note that though English borrowed the translation from German language roots, German itself doesn’t have this same day–their word for the fourth day of the week is mittwoch, literally “mid-week.”
So why did Odin get this day named after him in English? We know that it’s a callback to Latin, where the day was “Mercury’s Day,” and that there’s an old equivalency between Odin and Mercury…but historians aren’t sure why the two were equated. It’s mentioned in ancient works like Tacitus, but the two gods don’t have much in common in mythology, aside from both being “gods of eloquence.” So maybe Wednesday is a day for eloquence. 😉
Now let’s shift to the Ash portion of our Lenten-preparation words.
Ash for the word for the powdery remains of fire dates back to the earliest forms of English, which is no great surprise. Ashes were commonly used as a sign of grief or repentance–which of course we know from the Bible, when people would sit “in sackcloth and ashes” as a sign of mourning.
It was round about the year 1300 that Pope Gregory the Great instituted a 40-day period of penitence prior to Easter, beginning the season with Ash Wednesday–a day to sprinkle ashes over the heads of the faithful as a simple of repentance and an official period of mourning for our sins, which led Christ to the cross.
Do you observe Lent? Are you doing anything special this year to focus your heart and mind and habits? I’d love to hear about it!
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Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary. 
