Happy Fat Tuesday

Hallmark is missing out in a great opportunity. Fat Tuesday is coming up.

Now there's a day that we've not capitalized on. We party hard for Mardi Gras, but it's all in the revelry and the parades and throwing beads and getting plastered.

Isn't Super Bowl enough? C'mon! Listen to the name. Fat Tuesday. Fat.

Traditionally, the day has been observed as a way of using up items in the pantry before fasting at Lent, so as not to waste any food. Cooks would use up fat and eggs by making pancakes.

Fat Tuesday. Not wasting ingredients. Oh, the potential.

Here's a day to pig out. Like eating as much of your favorite foods as you can before the day you plan to go on a diet. I did that once. I'd decided to join Weight Watchers, so before the day I was going to sign up, I chowed down. And I enjoyed every bite of it. Right up to the time when I weighed in for the first meeting and realized that I could have gotten a jump start by actually doing nothing at all and not gaining the weight I did during the preceding days.

I digress here, but you get the concept.

You're gonna be giving up something for Lent. Might as well take Fat Tuesday for one last blowout.

Picture it. A Hallmark card to send to your Best Friend Forever (or Best Fat Friend, whichever): "Roses are red; Willows are bent; Stuff your face today; For tomorrow starts Lent."

Before the Valentine hearts go on half price sale (actually this year, before they even go on sale at all), stock the store shelves with Fat Tuesday boxes of chocolate. Wrap little chocolate balls in green, purple and gold foil, string them into necklaces, and you've got Mardi Gras beads worth collecting.

Start with a hearty Fat Tuesday breakfast of pancakes, followed by a midmorning snack of jelly doughnuts. Hit the KFC for lunch, then so you shouldn't grow weak from hunger midafternoon, indulge in a little pizza. Call your friends, invite them over after work, and serve up pasta Alfredo and cannoli for dessert.

Best of all, you don't have to feel guilty. It's Fat Tuesday. You're supposed to celebrate it; it's like you're expected to drink New Year's Eve. It's a holiday, for heaven's sake.

Newspapers will report on how grocery stores and delis raked in big bucks over the holiday, giving the name Fat Tuesday another meaning. It'll take on such gigantic proportions that, like Christmas, it'll lose its orignal sacred meaning.

Another American tradition whose time has come.

Let's get started on it!