One Final Comparison Between the Pre-Athanasian Alexandrian Lent and the Jewish 'Redemption' Period

First let's take a snapshot of the late Medieval world in Europe where Jews lived within Christian nations:

At certain festival seasons, in the Christian and in the Jewish year, there was an especially strong need to demand the separation of the two peoples, as though to prevent the superseded religion from challenging the dominant one. This seemed essential both where analogous festivals coincided, as with Passover and Easter, and where the contrasted. On the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the Jewish month of Adar, Purim, commemorated the events of the Book of Esther, created an oasis of rejoicing in the desert of the Lenten city. Often called the Jewish carnival, although it lasted only two days, it meant drink, masquerades and rombustuous behavior, and made Jewish customs alarmingly attractive to Christian libertines. Christian Lent too, was a season for Jewish weddings and dances. [Pullan, The Jews of Europe]

Now I know that the Alexandrian Christian tradition didn't celebrate weddings or masquerades during Lent. That's not the point. But read between the lines again at the snapshot that Athanasius provides us of the original tradition of Alexandria that he was working to trample down with his introduction of a Lenten FAST:

I have further deemed it highly necessary and very urgent, to make known to your modesty—for I have written this to each one— that you should proclaim the fast of forty days to the brethren, and persuade them to fast, lest, while all the world is fasting, we who are in Egypt should be derided, as the only people who do not fast, but take our pleasure in these days. For if, on account of the Letter [not] being yet read, we do not fast, we should take away this pretext, and it should be read before the fast of forty days, so that they may not make this an excuse for neglect or fasting. Also, when it is read, they may be able to learn about the fast. But O, my beloved, whether in this way or any other, persuade and teach them to fast the forty days. For it is a disgrace that when all the world does this, those alone who are in Egypt, instead of fasting, should find their pleasure. For even I being grieved because men deride us for this

There is something here my friends. I think the ascetic Markan traditions ABANDONED their fasts in the 'redemption' period between Purim and Passover - or if you prefer the Christian re-invention in the original gospel of Mark - the thirty days between LGM 1 and Easter.