# Forbidden Meat: Fasting and Abstinence During Advent (Rebroadcast)

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/food-for-thought-with-colleen-patrick-goudreau-690262/forbidden-meat-fasting-and-abstinence-during-advent-rebroadcast
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/food-for-thought-with-colleen-patrick-goudreau-690262/forbidden-meat-fasting-and-abstinence-during-advent-rebroadcast.md
Podcast: [Food for Thought with Colleen Patrick-Goudreau](https://stenobird.com/podcast/food-for-thought-with-colleen-patrick-goudreau-690262)
Published: 2025-12-06T02:06:13+00:00
Episode link: https://www.colleenpatrickgoudreau.com/p/forbidden-meat-fasting-and-abstinence
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/180852431/3287e66ee80936f5b0a58becf7a365b4.mp3
Processing state: processed
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/food-for-thought-with-colleen-patrick-goudreau-690262/episodes/forbidden-meat-fasting-and-abstinence-during-advent-rebroadcast
Duration seconds: 3706

## Resource

This podcast is listener-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. In this episode of Food for Thought , I explore the long, often-forgotten history of abstaining from meat during Advent and other Christian fasting periods, and how that tradition actually aligns beautifully with a modern vegan lifestyle. Drawing from my own Catholic upbringing, I look at how rites and rituals like Lent and Advent once emphasized simplicity, self-restraint, and giving up animal products, and how language, church rules, and holiday foods still carry traces of that history. I also invite listeners—religious or not—to consider their own version of conscious “fasting,” and I touch on traditional Advent/Christmas foods like Stollen that grew out of these practices. Here’s the video version of the introduction to the re-broadcast: In this episode, you’ll learn: * Historically, Christians spent more days not eating meat (and often other animal products) than eating it, especially around Lent and Advent. * The idea that being vegan is “incompatible” with culture or religion is new; religious abstinence from animal products is centuries old. * Words like “Carnival” (from carne levare – “remove meat”) and traditions like Meatfare/Cheesefare Sundays reflect this meatless history. * Advent used to be a serious season of fasting and abstinence, not just a time of treats, shopping, and countdown calendars. * Different Christian traditions (especially Eastern and Ethiopian Orthodox) still practice very strict, essentially vegan fasts for many days of the year. * Over time, church rules relaxed, and meat-eating became normalized and constant, while fasting became optional or symbolic. * You don’t have to be religious to embrace the spirit of fasti…

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