Today is Shrove Tuesday in the Catholic Christian church. It is the day before Lent. During Lent a Christian is supposed to give up indulgence and be repentant. I grew up Catholic until I was 15 when my atheist father decided to go to church. Although this made my mother incredibly happy he wanted to go to a different church, a Baptist church. See, the reason was my older brother was smoking pot and he thought it would be good for him. To make a long story short, we never went to the Catholic Church again. Instead, we went together as a family to the Baptist church. They don’t celebrate or have traditional Lent season.

To this day I miss the traditions we celebrated in the Catholic Church. One of them is Ash Wednesday which kicks off the Lent Season. As a Catholic you are supposed to give up something you really like and be repentant, whatever that means. I guess as a kid I thought it was like putting your nose on the blackboard. You wouldn’t face the rest of the classroom anymore for the entire time. Or perhaps it meant walking around moping, feeling extra sorry for whatever you had done wrong. For which I had no idea. I always made stuff up when going to confession.

Anyway, back to pancake day! I never celebrated this until I met my English boyfriend (now husband). Every Shrove Tuesday he would say: It’s Pancake Day!

Me: What’s That?

He: It’s a day we have pancakes!

This English tradition is handed down from hundreds of years. Similar traditions are found in Germany, France, and many other countries. People have been doing this for centuries.

The story goes that it originated way back in 1445, in the town of Olney in Buckinghamshire, England. A woman was so busy making pancakes that she lost track of time. She then ran to church with her pancakes.

In England it is celebrated as pancake day. It’s a day to splurge on eating and drinking before the fasting of Lent.

Germans call it Fastnacht. Which translates to Eve of the fast.

In France it is known as Mardi Gras which means Fat Tuesday.

In Iceland, it’s called “Sprengidagur” which means “Bursting Day”

I am not religious. However, we like to celebrate this time of year by making these pancakes that are more like crepes. We spread clotted cream and jam on them and roll them up to eat. So good!

So happy pancake day and eat some pancakes! Here is a link to my favorite recipe

Pfannkuchen auf Deutsch

Crêpe aus Francais

Pönnukaka in Icelandic

Tschüss!