Ash Wednesday. I remember it when I was a kid in school. My first awareness of different religions was that of classmates having reminants of ashes on their forheads when they came to school. When asked about it, they would tell me that their parents had taken them to an early church service that morning (at the whopping age of 10 the idea of church on a Wednesday was just plain weird) and the priest had put a cross of ashes on their forehead. I would ask them why, and every time the response was "I dunno."
As I got older, and my friends gained more knowledge in their churches, their replies to this question changed. Instead of "I dunno", I was answered with "because my parents made me". The dawning of enlightenment regarding religion for me began here. I was not the only 12 year old who did not enjoy going to church with her parents.
Of course, as I got older, and after I started going to church with a boyfriend instead of the church my parents went to, I learned the origins of Ash Wednesday, and the symbolism that goes with it. Now when my children ask me the meaning of it, I won't let them know that I'm making them, but what it really means.