An oil painting of a tall arched chapel window with bare winter branches beyond it, cold light falling across limestone onto a stone ledge holding a clay bowl of ash, a single dark loaf and a folded violet cloth.

What to Give Up for Lent

Lent 2027 runs from February 10, 2027 to Easter on March 28, 2027. Twelve things to choose from below, each with a reason and what it actually costs — and the two thirds of Lent that the lists leave out.

Choose something that costs you a little every day rather than something large you will abandon in the second week — and attach it to one of the other two things Lent asks. Lent has three pillars, not one: fasting, prayer and almsgiving. A fast with nothing attached to it is a diet with a season around it.

The three pillars, and the trap in each

Almost every list you will find answers only the first of these. That is why so many Lents end in the second week: the thing given up was never attached to anything, so there was nothing to keep it.

Fasting

Going without something, so that wanting it becomes a thing you notice rather than a thing you obey. It is the pillar everyone means by "giving something up", and it is the one that works least well on its own.

The trap: Choosing something you were half-minded to quit anyway. Giving up a habit you already disliked is self-improvement wearing Lent’s clothes; it costs nothing and teaches nothing, and by Easter you have a better diet and the same soul.

Prayer

Adding something, rather than removing it. Ten minutes in the morning, a decade of the Rosary on the commute, a psalm before bed. This is the pillar that gives the fasting somewhere to go.

The trap: Setting an amount you can only manage on a good day. A practice sized for your best week is a practice that ends in your first bad one, and the ending feels like failure rather than arithmetic.

Almsgiving

Giving away money, or time, or attention. Traditionally it is tied to the fasting: what you do not spend on the thing you gave up, you give to someone who needs it.

The trap: Leaving it abstract. "I will be more generous" is not almsgiving; a standing amount, a named place, and a date it goes out are.

Twelve to choose from

Four in each pillar. Not a hundred, deliberately — you are picking one, and a longer list makes that harder. Each says what it costs, which is the thing the lists never tell you and the only part that matters in week five.

  1. 1. One meal a day, eaten plain

    Fasting

    Not skipping the meal — eating it without the things that make it pleasant. It is smaller than a fast and harder to forget, because it arrives every day at a time you already keep.

    Costs: Nothing, and about forty seconds of resentment per meal.

  2. 2. The phone stays in another room overnight

    Fasting

    It removes the two least-chosen half-hours of the day: the one before sleep and the one after waking. Most people find they were not enjoying either.

    Costs: The price of an alarm clock, and three bad nights.

  3. 3. No second helpings, and no eating standing up

    Fasting

    Two small rules rather than one large denial. They are easy to keep and impossible to keep absent-mindedly, which is the whole exercise.

    Costs: Nothing. You will break it in week one and notice, which is the point.

  4. 4. Give up the complaint you like most

    Fasting

    Everyone has one they enjoy — about work, a relative, the traffic. Giving up chocolate is a diet; giving up the complaint you take pleasure in is a fast.

    Costs: Free, and by a distance the hardest thing on this list.

  5. 5. Fifteen minutes before anyone else is awake

    Prayer

    Not thirty. Fifteen survives a bad week, and a practice that survives a bad week is the only kind that reaches Holy Week.

    Costs: Fifteen minutes of sleep, most of which you were not using well.

  6. 6. A decade of the Rosary in the car

    Prayer

    It attaches prayer to something you already do daily, which is why it outlasts resolutions that need a new slot in the day.

    Costs: None. The commute was happening anyway.

  7. 7. The Stations of the Cross on Fridays

    Prayer

    Six Fridays, forty minutes each, and the season has a spine. Most parishes pray them publicly in Lent, so it also gets you out of the house.

    Costs: Forty minutes a week, six times.

  8. 8. Read one Gospel, straight through, by Easter

    Prayer

    Mark is sixteen chapters. That is a chapter every two or three days and it finishes with room to spare — and reading a Gospel whole is a different thing from reading it in pieces at Mass.

    Costs: Ten minutes, every second evening.

  9. 9. The money you did not spend, given away on Good Friday

    Almsgiving

    This is the traditional link between the first pillar and the third, and it is what turns going without into something that reaches another person. Keep a jar or a note on the phone.

    Costs: Exactly what you saved, which is the point.

  10. 10. One standing hour a week, given to someone

    Almsgiving

    A named person, a fixed hour: a neighbour, a parent, the parishioner who cannot drive. Time is the alms most people have and least often give.

    Costs: An hour. It will be the hour you least want to give.

  11. 11. Clear one shelf a week and give it away

    Almsgiving

    Six weeks, six shelves, and the giving is finished rather than intended. It also makes the season visible in the house, which children notice.

    Costs: An hour a week, and some reluctance you did not expect.

  12. 12. Write the letter you have been not writing

    Almsgiving

    To the person you fell out with, or the one you have simply let go quiet. Almsgiving is not only money, and this is the one that is still there at Easter.

    Costs: A stamp, and considerably more nerve than the others.

Do Sundays count?

Count it yourself: Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday is forty-six days, and there are six Sundays in between. Forty-six minus six is forty. Sundays are not counted in the forty days of Lent, because every Sunday is a feast of the Resurrection and the Church does not fast on a feast. Whether that means you may take the day off from what you gave up is a different question, and the honest answer is that it is left to you — there is no rule either way. Some keep it unbroken because a habit with a weekly hole in it is harder to hold; others take the Sunday deliberately, as a reminder that the fast was never the point. Neither is cheating.

What is actually required

Worth separating from what you choose, because the two get muddled constantly. These are asked of everyone; what you give up is not.

Fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday

Ages 18 to 59.

One full meal and two smaller ones that together do not equal a full meal. Water and medicine are never a break in the fast.

Abstinence from meat

Age 14 and up.

On Ash Wednesday, Good Friday and every Friday of Lent. Fish is not meat for this purpose, which is the entire reason for the Friday fish fry.

Everything else

Nobody, strictly.

What you give up is a personal resolution, not a precept. Illness, pregnancy, age or heavy manual work excuse the obligations above, and a priest can dispense from them; nobody needs permission to adjust a private one.

If you break it

None of this is graded. Lent is not an endurance event and the person who gave up more has not won; a small thing kept for forty days does more than a large thing abandoned in the second week. If what you chose turns out to be beyond you, choose something smaller rather than nothing — starting again in week three is entirely ordinary and always has been.

Print it and put it somewhere

This page prints as a plain sheet with the navigation and colours stripped out, so the thing you chose can sit on the fridge for six weeks rather than being remembered vaguely. Parishes and schools are welcome to print it for a group.

Once you have chosen

The season itself — what Lent is, the forty days, and this year’s dates — is on Lent, and Ash Wednesday is where it starts. If the pillar you picked was prayer, the Stations of the Cross are the Lenten devotion and print as a booklet, and the examination of conscience is what most people want before their Lenten confession. Counting down to the end of it, the Easter countdown works out the date from the paschal moon.

More free tools

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Frequently Asked Questions

Something that costs you a little every day, rather than something large you will abandon in the second week. The twelve below each say what they cost. And giving something up is only one of the three things Lent asks — the others are prayer and almsgiving, and the fast works far better when it is attached to one of them.