What is Ash Wednesday?

Pancake day is over and Lent has begun. But where did the day we call Ash Wednesday come from, and why do we celebrate it? Karen Murdarasi explores the origins of the Christian festival, and some of the more unusual ways it is marked today

The carnival is over, the pancakes are eaten, or scraped off the ceiling, and Lent has begun: it’s Ash Wednesday. But what is Ash Wednesday all about, and where does it come from? To answer that, we have to go back over 1,500 years, to a time when public penance was a huge part of Church discipline.