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MAIN
Holidays
& Observances Fat
Tuesday Pancake
Day
It's
time to pig out on pancakes! But
first, fill up
on facts and background info, recipes, history,
activities and more in our online guide to...
Shrove
Tuesday: The Pancake Fest
Shrove
Tuesday gets its name from the ritual of shriving, when the faithful
confessed their sins to the local priest and recieved forgiveness
before the Lenten season began.
As far back
as 1000 AD, "to
shrive" meant to hear confessions. (Trivia note: the
term survives today in the expression "short shrift"
or giving little attention to anyone's explanations or excuses).
Historically,
Shrove Tuesday also marked the beginning of the 40-day Lenten
fasting period when the faithful were forbidden by the church
to consume meat, butter, eggs or milk. However, if a family had
a store of these foods they all would go bad by the time the fast
ended on Easter Sunday. What to do?
Solution:
use up the milk, butter and eggs no later than Shrove Tuesday.
And so, with the addition of a little flour, the solution quickly
presented itself in... pancakes. And lots of 'em.
Today, the
Shrove Tuesday pancake tradition lives on throughout Western Europe,
the United States, Canada and Australia, but is most associated
with the UK where it is simply known as Pancake
Day with a traditional recipe, although these can be as
varied
in the UK as there are British households.
In France,
(as well as here in the US - or more famously - in New Orleans)
it's known as Fat Tuesday which kicks off the Mardi
Gras festival with wild celebrations just before the austere
Lenten season.
In Sweden,
Fat Tuesday translates to Fettisdagen, and in Lithuania
it's Uzgavens. In Poland, traditional celebrations take
place on a Thursday a week before Ash Wednesday and so it's Tlusty
Czwartek, or Fat Thursday.
Related Recipes
Related Web Sites:
Classroom Activities:
also see -> Pancake
Recipes for Shrove Tuesday
What
Mardi Gras Celebrates | National
Pancake Day
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