I have to admit that in primary school we called it Pancake Tuesday and we treated this day as something of a last hurrah before Lent started the following day! Here are some facts about Shrove Tuesday that may surprise you:
- Shrove is the past tense of shrive, which means to hear confessions. In previous centuries of the Church the faithful received the Sacrament of Confession prior to the commencement of Lent as a preparation for the time of penance.
- The English custom of making pancakes appears to have been suggested as a means to use up fat and eggs before Lent began. These were originally prohibited items of food during the forty days of Lent. This same prohibition is largely responsible for the link between Easter and eggs on the other side of Lent.
- Shrove Tuesday is also known under the names Pancake Tuesday, Fat Tuesday or Mardi Gras (which literally translates as Fat Tuesday) and was, and still is in some cases, celebrated as something of a carnival with plays, masques and games. These festivities often ran into wild excesses especially in countries like Spain in the sixteenth century, where a special form of prayer was instituted on the Monday and Tuesday immediately before Ash Wednesday in order to try and curb these carnival excesses.
This week’s activity is to cook pancakes (pikelets, crepes or hotcakes) and share them with your children.
Find a recipe here for a 2 ingredient pancake!
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This is the second post in our Lenten Calendar. You can check out the other posts HERE. Posts will get added to this list as they are published.
Originally posted 2015-02-16 22:01:11.
Your post actually reminded me that today was Shrove Tuesday! I had a playdate lined up during mass tomorrow and everything *shame*
It’s all good now, we’ve even made pancakes ^-^