Q: Generate the answer for a given question. The question requires common knowledge of English. Make sure that the answer is in detail, long, consistent with the context, and requires general knowledge of English. To be less repetitive, please vary your language for each question. Give a proper explanation to answer, and if necessary, provide the definition of various terms. And conclude your answer if it's long. If you have used other resources (e.g., Merriam Webster's.) to answer the question, include citations in your answer. You don't need to paraphrase the context of your resources, but make sure that your answer is consistent and complete.
I understand all the individual words in the following remark, but there doesn't seem to be any connection between the first half and the second. I am left wondering whether there is an English idiom that gives a double-meaning to part of it (perhaps 'picking my belly button'?), but if so it does not appear to be in any dictionary. I'm not Catholic, but I gave up picking my belly button for lint. Reference: The best God joke ever - and it's mine!.
A:
In Catholicism (and indeed many other branches of Christianity), the six weeks leading up to Easter are a time of contemplation and purification before the major festival. This period is known as Lent, and it is common to deny oneself something (say, sweets, chocolate, or playing computer games) as part of one's preparations (or at least it used to be these days there is a strong trend towards doing something positive such as doing something for charity). Thus in Catholic households, at a certain time of year, it's not uncommon to hear declarations such as 'I'm giving up [chocolates] for Lent'. The joke puns on the similarity in sound between Lent and lint, a word that can be used among other things to describe the fuzzy accumulation of clothes fibres that sometimes builds up in one's navel: he's saying he's giving up picking the lint out of his bellybutton, but in such a way that it sounds like he's giving up picking his bellybutton for Lent. For this he deserves an almighty thwack.