Ranée at Arabian Knits wrote:
>
> And really, Jesus was only telling
> people to fast because it was a cultural custom.

I thought that while he was alive he managed to keep his followers from
fasting but he understood that once he was gone he would no longer be
able to stop them. Sounds to me like it was a topic he wanted to
prepare folks for but not one so important as to make rules about it.
So later generations made up rules about it because that's what happens
in organized reading.

That's how I understood it when I read the New Testament as a member of
another religion learning comparative religion. I don't know how much I
missed doing it that way.

The holiday ties in with the agricultural year. A time to celebrate
that your family supplies lasted the winter and no one starved to death
this year. A time to rest before it was time to plant the new crops.

What I don't get is calling a meat-free diet a fast. It triggers a
language barrier inside my head like calling flesh cut from the bones of
an animal that happens to be a fish not meat.