In denominations which follow a liturgical calendar, Lent is the period just before Easter. It begins with Ash Wednesday, is roughly 40 days long, builds to Holy Week and then reaches its peak on Easter Sunday.
Lent is a time of .....preparation for the gift of Easter. That's a good definition. In our personal spiritual life we use these roughly 40 days to consider our relationship with God, practice extra generosity, engage more deeply in one of the spiritual practices including fasting, confession, prayer, repentance.
Some folks use this time to fast, that is, to choose to not....eat a special food, enjoy a particular entertainment, indulge in social media. There are lots of possibilities. It is a spiritual practice that is intended to bring our attention back to God each time we could eat....chocolate?....but choose not to.
Some folks devote these five weeks to some spiritual reading. There are many wonderful devotionals written just for the period of Lent, or you could simply find a book and spread it out over the 40 days.
Some folks take the 40 days of Lent to set aside an extra offering, either for a particular cause or simply to practice growing in generosity. Lent is a period of intentionality about our faith life.
About those 40 days. Only in the church can the 40 days of Lent be 7 weeks long. It has something to do with not counting Sundays (the day of the resurrection of Jesus, and therefore, not a penitential day). 40 days is an important number in the Bible (and the folks who wrote the Bible were very aware of the importance of numbers). The Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness. We spend (roughly) 40 days in Lent.
So, each year the date of Easter is determined and then we count back (roughly) 40 days and that sets the date of Ash Wednesday.
How is the date of Easter determined? It's the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox. Amazing isn't it?
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