“The Fight Between Carnival and Lent,” Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Recently seen by the author in Brussels. (Source)

The pious among my readers will no doubt be aware that Lent will soon be upon us. Here are 100 ideas for how to have a successful and most fruitful season of penance.

Give up meat Give up chocolate Give up alcohol Give up social media Give up being a social media influencer Give up films Give up naughty films Give up films that are very naughty but not the ones that are naughty while also being either smart or funny or historically dramatic in a passingly educational sort of way Give up comic books Give up music Give up secular music Give up Christian praise and worship music (for the love of God and all that is holy) Give up lobster, though not on Fridays Give up dairy Give up various soft cheeses Give up all cheeses from Poitou-Charente but not anywhere else in France Give up Netflix Give up “Netflix” Give up petting zoos Give up marsupials Give up giraffes of any kind Give up your ignorance of the various kinds of giraffe Give up spy novels Give up surprising all of your friends by suddenly screaming at them, apropos of nothing, “No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!” Give up your longstanding telenovela addiction Give up trying to learn Portuguese in favor of Esperanto Give up learning Esperanto Give up reading the poetry of William McGonagall, the Apollo of Dundee Give up the various birds, stuffed and otherwise, that you are hoarding in your attic and basement Give up your deeply-rooted habit of eating little fragments of ceramic statues Give up your swimming lessons Give up your avoidance of Luton, Slough, and Swindon Give up the American news cycle Give up the Busby Berkeley marathons you play in your living room every Friday evening Give up pretending you are, in fact, the reincarnation of Senhor Doutor Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira Give up whining Give up long walks in the park Give up spitting in public Give up gossip Give up gossip about me, please Give up your general wanton demeanor and frowsy mien Give up the chips Give up all professional sports Give up your various simultaneous affairs with the members of the Swazi National Curling Team Give up the ghost Give up your collection of Rococo snuff boxes depicting various prince-bishops in ermine Give up practicing the kazoo at inappropriate hours of the night Give up Morris dancing Give up peanut butter and eel jelly sandwiches Give up your place in line Give up the furious Mah-Jong tournaments you regularly host for gangs of aged nuns Give up reciting the poetry of William McGonagall, Bard of Dundee Give up your participation in the capitalist system enslaving us all Give up toast Give up the secret alien knowledge you acquired through highly illegal methods of infiltrating government files Give up felonies in general Give up all the Skittles you have hoarded in your closet Give up the various coffee table books of early brutalist architecture that you have received from work colleagues, many of whom have since passed on Give up on modern architecture in toto Give up writing emoji haikus Give up your shoegaze band, Emoji Haiku Give up on romance Give up on romantic comedies Give up those trashy bodice-rippers they sell in the supermarket book aisle (you know the ones) Give up your seat in the Académie française Give up your seat on the train to Timbuktu Give up your seat on the Parish Council (here’s looking at you, Susan) Give up your operatic emotional troubles Give up addressing everyone in song Give up asserting that you are, in fact, Madama Butterfly Give up counting time in anything but the Mayan calendar Give up your general estrangement from Mesoamerican culture Give up your allergies Give up your obstinate refusal to learn the Sasquatch language Give up your unreliable narration Give up your postmodern metairony Give up your Twitter account Give up treating your dogs like children Give up treating your children like dogs Give up treating your children better than your cats Give up your claim to the long-defunct throne of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Give up your alarming habit of musical flatulence Give up your covert addiction to locomotive erotica Give up your understated unibrow Give up your long-awaited nose job Give up your embittered attempt to remain Dean of a prominent English Cathedral Give up memorizing the poetry of William McGonagall, the Orpheus of Dundee Give up any expectations of amusement Give up the pipe dream of tenure Give up your position to the various paramilitary forces that are hunting you through the tundra Give up break-dancing in public parks Give up attending Hare Krishna services Give up any association with the Libertarian Party Give up all hope, ye who enter here. Give up the secret recipe Give up the art your late uncle Oswald took from various museums over the course of his long and chequered career as a forger and art thief Give up approximately 1/4 of your bone marrow Give up being lame Give up all the excuses you always make for not keeping your Lenten penance Just give up