Lenten Snacks

A brief history of the pretzel and its Lenten origin, from Francis X. Weiser’s Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs:

“A most interesting survival of early Christian Lenten fare is a certain form of bread familiar to all of us. The Christians in the Roman Empire made a special dough consisting of flour, salt, and water only (since fat, eggs, and milk were forbidden). They shaped it in the form of two arms crossed in prayer, to remind them that Lent was a season of penance and devotion. They called these breads “little arms” (bracellae). From the Latin word the Germans later coined the term Brezel or Prezel, from which comes our word pretzel. The oldest known picture of a pretzel may be seen in a manuscript from the fifth century in the Vatican.

“All through medieval times and into the present, pretzels remained an item of Lenten food in many parts of Europe. In Germany, Austria, and Poland, they made their annual appearance on Ash Wednesday; special vendors (Brezelmann) sold them on the streets of cities and towns. People would eat them for lunch, together with a stein of their mild, home-brew beer. In Poland they were eaten in beer soup.

“In the cities pretzels were distributed to the poor on many days during Lent. In parts of Austria, children wore them suspended from the palm bushes on Palm Sunday. With the end of Lent the pretzels disappeared again until the following Ash Wednesday. It was only during the last century that this German (actually, ancient Roman) bread was adopted as an all-year tidbit, and its Lenten significance all but forgotten.”