Be sure to stop by and celebrate with us at Lake Cities UMC’s first annual Shrove Tuesday celebration.
Festivities will run from 5:30-7:30, and will include a pancake supper with sausage and fruit, the burning of the ‘shroves’ (pieces of paper that we have written our sins on, which will be mixed with palm ashes for Ash Wednesday), ‘the rolling up of the alleluias’ (a symbolic reminder that we do not sing ‘alleluia’ during Lent), making Lenten decorations for your home, and walking our labyrinth which will be lit up with luminaries. This will be a wonderful opportunity to learn about these historic traditions of the Church, as well as participate in them. All activities will be supervised and child friendly.
It will be a great way to prepare for Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, so bring your friends and families! Shrove Tuesday is the day before Lent starts: the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. It is a day of repentance as well as a day of celebration. It is a day of repentance as we purify our hearts in preparation for Lent, and it is a day of celebration because it is traditionally the last chance to feast before Lent begins.
Shrove Tuesday is often called “Fat Tuesday,” and sometimes called Pancake Day after the fried batter recipe traditionally eaten on this day. But there is much more to Shrove Tuesday than filling up on pancakes. The pancakes themselves are part of an ancient custom with deeply religious roots.
Shrove Tuesday gets its name from the ritual of shriving that Christians used to undergo in the past. In shriving, a person would confess their sins and receives absolution, or forgiveness, for them. When a person receives absolution for their sins, they are forgiven for them and released from the guilt and pain that they have caused them. It is a way to start over, with a clean slate. In Protestant traditions, pastors do not grant “absolution” for sins, but they do offer God’s grace to those seeking forgiveness for, and release from, the sins they have committed. The tradition of shriving (or confessing your sin) on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday is very old.
Shrove Tuesday is a day of celebration as well as penitence, because it's the last day before Lent. Lent is a time of abstinence, of giving things up. So Shrove Tuesday is the last chance to indulge yourself, and to use up the foods that aren't allowed in Lent.
During Lent there are many foods that some Christians - historically and today - would not eat: foods such as meat and fish, fats, eggs, and milky foods. So that no food was wasted, families would have a feast on the shriving Tuesday, and eat up all the foods that wouldn't last the forty days of Lent without going off. The need to eat up the fats gave rise to the French name Mardi Gras ('fat Tuesday'). Pancakes became associated with Shrove Tuesday as they were a dish that could use up all the eggs, fats and milk in the house with just the addition of flour.
