Shrove Tuesday
Otherwise known as Pancake Day, Pancake Tuesday, Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday, Shrove Tuesday is traditionally a day of penitence; but more often an excuse to scoff loads of pancakes!
Sandwiched between Collop Monday and Ash Wednesday, Shrove Tuesday represents the final day before the Christian period of abstinence – called Lent – that lasts 40 days, in replication of Jesus’ time spent fasting in the wilderness.
Shrove Tuesday always falls 47 days before Easter Sunday, between 3rd February and 9th March, and in 2010 it takes place on 16th February: when it’s time to oil up the trusty old frying pan in preparation for the age-old tradition of pancake tossing.
Not Just Pancakes @ Shrovetide
Shrove Tuesday is not just a day for pancakes: traditional Shrovetide Tuesday football games are held in many towns dating back to the 12th century.
In Ashbourne in Derbyshire, a rollicking event called the Royal Shrovetide Football Match has taken place since 1928, when Edward Vll received a bloodied nose in the action! Two teams, known as the Up’ards (those born on the north side of the river Henore) and the Down’ards (those born on the south side), kick off a wild football match that is played over the surrounding hills and dales.
A similar event called The Ball Game occurs in Atherstone in Warwickshire, dating from the time of King John, involving good-hearted rough and tumble through the streets in pursuit of a ball dropped from the upstairs window of the Barclays Bank!
Why is Tuesday Shrove?
The day gets its name from the old ritual of shriving: when churchgoers would confess their sins and receive absolution, before coming home to finish off all the perishable ingredients in the larder that were forbidden during Lent.
As these included butter, eggs, milk and fat, pancakes seemed to be a good way of using up everything in one delicious dish.
The pancakes were traditionally served with a meat based stew, but nowadays are more usually thin, flat cakes of batter sprinkled with caster sugar with lemon juice, syrup or jam – although savoury toppings are often used too.
Shriving used to start at 11.00am, when the sound of the church bell signalled the call for confession; tradition says that on Shrove Tuesday in 1445, a woman in Olney in Buckinghamshire was so busy making pancakes that she lost track of time and, in her panic to get to church before the shriving service began, ran through the streets in her apron and scarf, still brandishing a frying pan complete with pancake.
The story is still celebrated today in the Olney Pancake Race: housewives of the town compete in a race to run 415 yards from the Market Place to the Church, wearing a scarf, skirt and apron and tossing a pancake; the lucky winner being rewarded at the finishing line by a kiss of peace from the verger.
Similar antics take place all across Britain:
The Great Spitalfields’ Pancake Race which begins, after the toss, from the Old Truman Brewery in Brick Lane;
The Great Pancake Race starting from Tower Hill Terrace;
at Westminster, the Rehab UK Parliamentary Pancake Race is a relay run to raise money for the national charity Rehab UK, when members of the House of Lords, House of Commons and the Fourth Estate (members of the press) take up their frying pans and engage in a hotly contested battle for the title of Parliamentary Pancake Race Champions – terms of engagement are strictly observed, and the rule book advises the unruly MPs that “Frying pans must not be used as weapons…whatever the provocation.” ;
a similarly eccentric tradition at Westminster School in London is the Pancake Greaze, a bitter fight between the pupils to obtain the largest piece of a horsehair-reinforced pancake, thrown over a metal bar by the school cook!
In 2006 National Pancake Day was launched by the International House of Pancakes (IHOP), a fundraising event whereby people can visit their local shop to receive a stack of buttermilk pancakes and donate money to charities.
Though the traditions of Shrove Tuesday are deeply rooted in the past, for most families it is a homely celebration centred round the stove, when pancake tossing skills can be put to the test…
…and probably represents the best fun you can ever have with a frying pan!