Changes

The carnival 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– is now here. 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:

}}</ref> In If you're Polish traditionAmerican or Polish Canadian, or just happen to live in one of the parts of North America with significant Polish-heritage populations, you may have celebrated the last day before Lent is known as "Fat Tuesday" or "Paczki Day". Throughout those parts of North America with significant Polish American or Polish Canadian populations, this This day is traditionally marked by eating copious amounts of paczkis, or delicious, spongy doughnuts in the shape of a flattened ball, injected with jam or other filling. This is, for example, what a local paper from Grand Rapids, Michigan, wrote about the tradition: