Tuesday, February 25th, @ 5:30PM
Gather family and friends for this wonderful tradition at Saint John’s Parish Hall, where devoted flippers have been serving delicious pancakes dripping in butter and maple syrup to the Episcopal congregation in Charlestown, MA, for too many years to even remember when they first learned the one handed flip. We’ve not begun our own traditional Pancake Race, YET, but we laugh, we sing, we have a rollicking good time, and we welcome you to join us! Please remember to bring last year’s palms to burn for Ash Wednesday, and if you would like to learn more about the community tradition of the Pancake Race, held elsewhere, and now an international sensation, please read on!
Celebrated the day before Ash Wednesday, Shrove Tuesday, also called, “Pancake Tuesday,” or “Pancake Day,” is the final day before the forty day period of Lent begins. This year it falls on February 25th. Its name comes from the Germanic-Old English word, “shrive,” meaning to present oneself for absolution, and it is the last day of the liturgical season historically known as, Shrovetide.
Because it comes directly before Lent, a season of fasting and penitence, this was the day that Christians would go to be “shriven,” by their confessor. In the Christian tradition, Shrove Tuesday is also known as, Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday), Faschingsdienstag, Malasada Day, Sprengidagur, Martes de Carnaval, and Pancake Day! All these terms refer to the last hurrah of overdoing it before the Lenten fasting begins. Celebrating by eating pancakes uses up your supply of oil, eggs, milk, and sugar, which you may be giving up until Easter.
Many communities have a pancake festival or some kind of gathering to eat pancakes together before Lent. One of the oldest is in the village of Olney, England where an annual Pancake Race dates back five centuries! On Shrove Tuesday, women compete against each other in a 415-yard race in which they must carry a pancake in a skillet. The legend is that when the church bells rang for Shrove Tuesday service in the year 1445, a certain housewife was not finished grilling the cakes. Not wishing to ruin her pancakes, she ran to the church with pan in hand.
The Shrove Tuesday Pancake Race is now an international tradition with various rules, such as follow:
1. Gentleman and gentlewoman behavior will be strictly observed at all times.
2. Administrators will especially be expected to be on their best behavior and to act as an example to all participants.
3. Frying pans must not be used as weapons or as a means of making unseemly gestures, whatever the depth of provocation or the nature of the person at the root of the provocation.
4. Any surplus eggs, flour or butter remaining from the earlier making of pancakes must not be propelled in the direction of other participants or spectators.
5. The course is over 25 meters and, in that distance, pancakes must be tossed once to a minimum height of 30cm.
6. If a participant allows a pancake to fall, he or she must return to the starting line and begin again.
7. Members from each team will run in relay and the pancake, frying pan, and apron must be exchanged intact before the next member of the team can proceed.
8. The organizers reserve the right to send off violent or unruly participants.
For more information about where we gathered this information, please follow the links, below:
https://episcopalchurch.org/library/article/pass-syrup-—-its-shrove-tuesday
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/23976/happy-pancake-day