Tuesday

Today is Tuesday — depending on where you’re from, or how you were raised, it may also be Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, Shrove Tuesday, Pancake Day or even Fasnacht Day. Today, February 25th is all of those. It’s the day before Ash Wednesday.

Mardi Gras is French for Fat Tuesday and is another name for Shrove Tuesday. Shrove is derived from the middle English word shriven, that means to go to confession and atone for your sins. Shrove Tuesday is often referred to as Pancake Day.  It’s the day before Ash Wednesday, that marks the start of Lent — a 40 day fasting and abstinence leading up to Easter. Lent is meant to mirror Jesus’ 40 days of fasting while he was in the Judean desert.

Today is often called Pancake Day because during the fasting period of Lent, traditionally, rich, fatty foods such as milk, eggs and flour were not eaten, so making pancakes became a way of using these before the fasting began.

I mentioned in this blog a few years ago, that I hadn’t heard of Fasnacht Day before we moved here to Shepherdstown. Fasnacht Day is an annual Pennsylvania Dutch celebration that falls on Shrove Tuesday. The word translates to Fasting Night in English. The tradition is to eat the very best foods, which are part of the German tradition, before the Lenten fast. 

After we moved here, we got our first Fastnacht from a Mennonite bakery in Sharpsburg. A fastnacht is a yeast-raised potato donut. The Fastnachts we had were square (with no hole in the middle.) But they can also be triangular in shape. Square-shaped fastnachts are meant to represent the four gospels of the Bible, while the triangular fastnacht represents the Holy Trinity.
So whatever you call it, eat up — for tomorrow we fast.
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