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{{data|3 March 2020}}
The carnival is almost over. For Catholics worldwide, these are the last days to have fun and eat well before Lent – the 40-day period (not counting the Sundays) of fasting , leading up to Easter. In Poland, quite adequately, Lent coincides with early spring, the gloomiest of Polish climate's six seasons.<ref>The six traditional (that is, pre-global-climate-change) Polish seasons are: ''zima'' (winter), ''przedwiośnie'' (early spring), ''wiosna'' (spring), ''lato'' (summer), ''złota jesień'' (golden autumn) and ''szaruga jesienna'' (gray autumn). Or, in the words of a poet:
{{Cytat
| <poem>In Poland there's six seasons
The funny thing is that if you showed the text above to anyone who actually lives in Poland they would be quite surprised by how many inaccuracies it contains. First of all, the correct spelling is "''pączki''", not "paczki". It's true that "''paczki''" means "packages", but it's a completely different (and unrelated) word than "''pączki''" (notice the little hook under the "a"?), which is the correct term for Polish doughnuts. Secondly, the correct pronunciation is more like ''{{small|PAUNCH}}-key'' than ''{{small|POONCH}}-key''. Thirdly, prunes and apricots seem pretty weird as ''pączki'' fillings; everybody knows that rose-hip jam is the most traditional and most aromatic one. And finally, the chief ''pączki''-eating day is not Fat Tuesday, but Fat Thursday, six days earlier.
Tony Machalski, a Polish American who has immigrated to the country of his ancestors and now runs ''The Foreign Citizen'' Youtube channel, did a pretty good job two years ago explaining the difference between what Polish Americans think they know about ''pączki'' and what the actual facts are back in the "old country".
{{Video|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozeLMbxEN0A|szer=400|poz=center|opis= The Foreign Citizen:<br>Pączki & Fat Thursday or Paczki & Fat Tuesday}}
