Why Do Christians Wear Smudge Marks on Ash Wednesday?

On Ash Wednesday, of course, many of my employees come in with ashes on their foreheads. But I've never known where exactly they come from. One reason I've hesitated to ask is that a friend of mine says they have something to do with cremation. Is that right? My background is Hindu and we honor ashes.

We are about to save you from making a big social and religious gaffe. While one could imagine that the smudge on the forehead of Mike the receptionist could have been Uncle Charlie, such is not the case. Palms from the previous year's Palm Sunday are burned to provide the ashes, which are smeared on Christians' foreheads during Ash Wednesday church services as a symbol of repentance. Depending on the denomination, a priest or minister applies the ashes, saying "Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return," "Turn from sin and be faithful to the gospel," or other phrases.

Why use ash from burned palms? Just as Palm Sunday inaugurates Holy Week in the Christian year, Ash Wednesday begins the 40-day period of Lent.

While most Catholics and many Episcopalians receive ashes, not all branches of Christianity mark Ash Wednesday the same way. Most Protestants don't receive ashes, though many seem plenty willing enough to wolf down pancakes on Fat Tuesday the day before.

How should a liberal who believes in tolerance and pluralism relate to a fundamentalist who thinks tolerance and pluralism are heresy? If liberalism tolerates fundamentalism, but the reverse isn't true, isn't the deck stacked for the fundamentalists?

As you realize, fundamentalism is a state of mind, not just a religious way of thinking. If we define a fundamentalist as one who has a fixed, unshakable set of assumptions, then the term applies far beyond religious conservatives. There are fundamentalist investors, fundamentalist architects, fundamentalist politicians, fundamentalist coaches, and so on.

An otherwise liberal-leaning health fanatic may hold very fixed beliefs about diet and exercise, admitting no possibility of error. Environmentalists, feminists and civil libertarians, though not usually lumped in with the fundamentalist crowd, often exhibit the very same reluctance to compromise basic suppositions. Rigidity and absolutism, therefore, by no means belong solely to religious fundamentalists. Fundamentalism does tend to see the truth as a narrow path, whereas liberalism sees many paths to the same end. But each is in its own way a dogma.

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