Flowers aren't put in sanctuaries. Altars are not decorated. Songs are somber, and Roman Catholics don't sing the Alleluia, as they do the rest of the year during worship. All of that was meant to prepare you to celebrate a holy Easter and to appreciate the importance of that date. This forces the wearer to explain the ashes to those who ask, Northrop said, and requires a person to give more attention to his or her faith than on a typical day.
Some people fast.
Others don't eat meat on Friday, the day it is believed Jesus died. Don Saliers, a professor at Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, thinks it is part of a move by churches to turn attention toward preparing for baptism and away from reliving Christ's 40 days in the desert before he entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. I'm going to be more disciplined in Lent than I am the rest of the year. Just like each time an observant Jew goes into McDonald's and doesn't order a cheeseburger, it reinforces that person's sense of identity, of community, of God. It gets people at those really basic levels.