Eating Meat on Fridays on This Day in History

 

This day in history: Roman Catholics in the United States would no longer be required to abstain from meat on Fridays, as a national conference of Roman Catholic cardinals, archbishops and bishops voted in Washington to revoke a requirement of abstinence that had been in effect for 11 centuries, on this day in 1966. As part of the recognition of Friday as a day of penance, Pope Nicholas I had decreed in the 9th century that adherents to Roman Catholic faith would be required to abstain from the eating of meat, although the consumption of fish on Fridays was permitted. Friday, December 2, 1966, would mark the first day that 45,000,000 American Roman Catholics could consume beef, chicken, pork, or other meats without violating Church doctrine. Philip Hannan, Archbishop of New Orleans, and Clarence George Issenmann, the Bishop of Cleveland, jointly made the announcement at a press conference.

George Carlin once joked: "It's not even a sin anymore to eat meat on Friday, but I'll bet there are still guys in hell doing time on a meat rap."

However, according to the National Catholic Register, "Contrary to common misconception, abstinence from meat on Fridays throughout the year has never been abolished from Roman law. It was not abolished by Vatican II. It was not abolished by Pope Paul VI or Pope St. John Paul II. It was not abolished by the 1983 Code of Canon Law. It remains the universal law of the Latin Church — even if not everyone has to obey it." Source

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Lunch Meat SPAM on This Day in History

Monty Python SPAM 

This Day in History: SPAM, the luncheon meat, was introduced into the market by the Hormel Foods Corporation on this day in 1937. SPAM is chopped pork shoulder meat with ham, salt, water, sugar, and sodium nitrite, unless of course you get some other variation of it. The word SPAM is short for "spiced ham" not "something posing as meat." SPAM was invented in the depression era, a low cost food item which Margaret Thatcher once referred to as a "wartime delicacy" [Nearly 100 million pounds of SPAM were consumed by the Allied troops during World War II.] 

Spam has long had a somewhat dubious reputation in the United States and (to a lesser degree) United Kingdom as a poverty food. The image of Spam as a low cost meat product gave rise to the Scottish colloquial term "Spam valley" to describe certain affluent housing areas where residents appear to be wealthy but in reality may be living at poverty levels.

Hormel produces 44,000 cans of SPAM every hour. SPAM is big in Hawaii and the McDonald's restaurants there feature SPAM on the menu. Hawaiian Burger King restaurants began serving Spam in 2007 to compete with the local McDonald's chains. In Hawaii, Spam is so popular that it is sometimes referred to as "The Hawaiian Steak". There is even an annual Spam-themed festival on the island of Oahu that takes place every spring, known as the "Waikiki Spam Jam". Local chefs and restaurants compete to create new Spam-themed dishes, which are then sold in a massive street fair on Kalakaua Avenue in Waikiki.

Believe it or not, there is a SPAM Museum in Austin, MN