A Special Day
There is a special day for everything. For instance, we celebrate our birthday to recognise that we are officially 1 year older. We also celebrate Valentine's day with our special one to express love to each other. Other occasions like Halloween is celebrated to appease restless spirits. During this event, We would dress up and play tricks or treats with our neighbours,
Naturally, there is also a day that is dedicated to pancakes and we can actually celebrate pancakes day by feasting on pancakes! Isn't it wonderful?
Pancake day vs Shrove Tuesday
Pancakes day is also known as Shrove Tuesday. It is a traditional festival that is believed to originate from Olney, England where Christians would celebrate it by mass producing pancakes and feast on it after.
The reason why they mass produce pancakes on Shrove Tuesday is because Ash Wednesday would be the start of Lent where they would abstain from eating animal products such as butter, milk, and eggs.
Lent? Ash Wednesday?
Lent is the beginning of 40 days leading to Easter. Though Shrove Tuesday will always be 47 days before Easter Sunday. Lent is also traditionally known a period of fasting as they were not supposed to consume fats and eggs.
Hence, Shrove Tuesday would be the last day where they can enjoy fats and eggs.
To prevent any wastage of their fats and eggs, they would make it into pancakes and that is why Shrove Tuesday is also known as pancakes day.
'Shrove' is a word that derived from 'Shrive' which by the definition of a dictionary, it means to hear the confession of, assign penance and absolve.
Therefore, how 'Shrove' Tuesday came about was because Christians would have to confess their sins on that specific Tuesday (which is 47 days before Easter Sunday as mentioned in the above paragraph) to become 'Shriven' and absolved of their sins.
Pancake Race
Yes! Pancake Race is an important event held annually in UK to celebrate Shrove Tuesday. The Pancake Race originated from 1445 where a woman dashed out of her house and toward the church immediately after hearing the shriving bell while still holding onto her pan with her pancakes inside it.
The tradition of this race is thus being passed down for generations till today. Participants have to be in fanciful dresses and is only open to local housewives.
Other than those fanciful dresses as part of the criteria to join the race, participants would need to dress up with an apron and a scarf or hat. The race is designed in a relay manner where teams
of 4 run towards the finishing line while completing 3
flips for the pancake in the pan.
I hope all of you managed to learn something new from my blog post today!
Thank you for reading!
Credits
Pancake race picture:
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