Basketball Sinners Repent! (It’s Lent)


The NCAA defying ancient church doctrine. So is the NBA. And, well, so is every high school basketball team.

That’s if they are playing basketball after the official beginning of the Season of Lent, which begins on Ash Wednesday.

In the early days of basketball, the Christian origins of the game (in the YMCA) spawned an unwritten commandment that games were forbidden to be played (or watched) between Ash Wednesday and Easter — the 40-day holy period known as Lent. It falls at a slightly different time every year, but almost always overlaps with March Madness – the N.C.A.A. Basketball Championship Tournament.

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The last basketball games of the Pre-Lenten Season were typically played the day before Ash Wednesday – on Mardis Gras – and they were always epic.

The Lenten Season, as it was called, symbolized solidarity with Jesus, who, according to Biblical accounts, went into the wilderness for 40 days of fasting, abstinence, soul-searching, and repentance before starting his ministry.

In contrast, the fun, frolic, dancing, and madness enjoyed by players, teams, and spectators at basketball games was considered highly inappropriate and even blasphemous during this very solemn time.

Anything resembling fun had to be squeezed in prior to Lent, during the Pre-Lenten Season. Or else.

As you may know, Easter always falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the first day of spring (March 20). In those days, basketball schedulers couldn’t book game dates until after Easter.

Applying that vintage ideology today, it means that the NCAA qualifying rounds are almost always “sinful,” but at least the Final Four often falls outside of Lent. Sometimes, as was the case in 2013, only the Championship Final game was outside of the holy days. In 2017, the entire March Madness – including the Final Four and the Championship Final – fell within the Lenten Season. So before you start buying tickets or flipping channels, check your calendars first, sinners!

This unofficial commandment was particularly strict among African American basketball teams. At the time, in their effort to assimilate and gain equality, African American leaders thought it was best for the race to model itself after the highest standards of elite European society.

Father Everard Daniel
St. Christopher Club’s athletic director, Father Everard Daniel.

This thinking translated to basketball, where, for example, professionalism in the sport was considered a inappropriate until well into the 1920s.

Furthermore, many early Black basketball teams had strong links to churches. The St. Christopher Club, which won four Colored Basketball World’s Championships during the 1910s, was organized by the St. Philip’s Protestant Episcopal Church in Harlem, perhaps the most prestigious black church in the country at the time. The Smart Set Athletic Club of Brooklyn, which won two such championship titles, was connected with St. Augustine’s Protestant Episcopal Church.

Thus, the last basketball game of the Pre-Lenten Season was typically scheduled to coincide with the weekend just before Mardi Gras, the day before Ash Wednesday. The last Pre-Lenten game was always epic.

Basketball resumed immediately after Easter, in the first post-Lenten game.

Eventually, the resolve behind this unofficial Lenten taboo disintegrated. Black self-identity evolved – African Americans turned away from trying to copy the norms of others and moved, sometimes literally, toward celebrating their own culture.

Meanwhile, African American basketball teams enjoyed increased market demand, and increasingly lucrative financial opportunities. The sport was just too tempting to abstain from enjoying it. That’s still true today.

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16 years ago

As a descendent of folks from the island of St Kitts (nee Christopher), I am aware that Bob Douglas, from that island, was the founder of the Rens. Would you know if this was just coincidence, or was the “St Christopher Club ” another one of his ventures?

Claude
16 years ago

Ken, the St. Christopher Club was named for the patron saint of safe travel, St. Christopher. The club was originally established in the late 1800s, when St. Philip’s was still located on W. 26th Street in NYC, to help keep African American youth busy so they would stay off the dangerous, seedy streets of the Tenderloin District, which is now midtown Manhattan.

Thanks for asking!

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