Category Archives: Shrove Tuesday

Feb 20 2020
Carnevale, Lent, Shrove Tuesday

Carnevale, Shrovetide, & Pancakes for Supper

Carnevale has been going on in Venice this year since the 8th of February, and soon we come to its conclusion, along with the conclusion of all the magnificent Carnival celebrations that have been happening in the lands where Carnival is celebrated, for Tuesday next brings Mardi Gras, Shrove Tuesday, Pancake Day. The day that follows will bring Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent.

In Venice and throughout Italy, the traditional symbol for Lent is a gaunt old woman, all skin and bones. She is known as La Vecchia: The Old One. Ah, but La Vecchia won’t show up until next Wednesday once her time of Quaresima begins. For now, it is Carnevale, a time to celebrate to excess. La Vecchia’s counterpart for Carnevale is a plump, jovial fellow wearing a garland of sausages around his neck. We are here to celebrate like there is no tomorrow. Out of that come the costumes and the wigs and the masks. In Venice, these tend to be beautiful and elaborate: exquisite costumes that harken back to the glorious Renaissance and Baroque ages of the city.

Here in the States, when we think of Mardi Gras, we think of New Orleans. But there are other convivial cities where the celebration is grand, too: Mobile and Key West come to mind. We have a burgeoning New Orleans style celebration happening in recent years in nearby Fort Lauderdale, too. But for the most part in this land first settled by English Puritans, we celebrate mainly with pancakes. And while it’s no Carnevale, still, pancakes for supper is not such a bad thing. It’s called Shrovetide in the English tradition––Shrove Tuesday being the British version of Mardi Gras. It’s also known as Pancake Day. We eat pancakes for supper that day because it is a meal that uses up the last of the eggs, milk, and sugar that remained in the larder before the forty fasting days of Lent commenced. Nowadays most of the fasting is done by folks who refrain from eating meat on Fridays. But in earlier times, the fast was more widely observed and much more strict. And so the intention was to refrain from all things of the flesh: meat, eggs, cheese, milk… sex, too, was out.

La Vecchia will be here before you know it, reminding us just how short our time on this earth is. So go ahead: enjoy these days. This is what Carnevale is all about.

 

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Mar 05 2019
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Ash Wednesday, Lent, Shrove Tuesday

Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday

Shrovetide is the time we’ve been in in recent days: the time of merry making before Lent begins. And Shrove Tuesday is today: the very last of it. Tomorrow will bring Ash Wednesday and a decidedly not merry time: Lent, forty days of fasting and penance and reflection. Which is perhaps something we need every now and then. Well certainly once a year, it was thought, and why not now, when the larders were getting empty. Back in the days when food was not as plentiful and easily procured as it is now, Lent was crucial to help get everyone through to spring and renewal.

There are many traditions in foodways for Shrove Tuesday, known also as Mardi Gras. I’m not so crazy about the King Cakes that are in grocery stores this time of year––they’re a bit too sweet and insipid for my tastes, with all that purple and green and yellow sugar. But the Polish bakeries will have pączki today, a rich filled doughnut, and the Swedish bakeries will have cream filled buns called semla. If they’re doing things right they’ll be selling them today but definitely not tomorrow and not again until next Shrovetide. In Germany, it is Fasnacht, and folks will be making doughnuts for the occasion this night (nacht) before the fast.

Seth and I, we’ll be making pancakes for our supper, and that is an old delicious tradition, one designed for times when Lent was much more restrictive than it is now. Nowadays you’re golden if you pass up on meat on Fridays, but in ages past, folks had to give up meat for all forty days, and also eggs and all kinds of things we take for granted now. Making pancakes for supper on Shrove Tuesday was a way to use up all the eggs, all the milk, and all the sugar before the next day’s dawning brought Lent. We eat our pancakes with festivity and in good spirit, and in the morning, if we have it in us, we will approach that altar to have ashes smeared on our foreheads with the spoken reminder: Remember man that thou are dust and to dust you shall return. We are made of the stuff of this earth and we shall return to it. But the stuff of this earth is made of the stuff of the stars, too, and that is something to ponder. If nothing else, these forty days that follow tonight’s pancake supper will hopefully remind us that life is short, and we would do well to live the time we have with compassion and kindness for our fellow human beings, and to love each day, and, as we like to say here, to live the ceremony of each day, too.

Image: “Shrovetide,” a painting by Igor Novikov, 2013. No pancakes or semla or pączki to be found in the picture, but it’s ok; I do love the painting. Used with gratitude through Creative Commons via Wikimedia Commons.

 

Feb 12 2018
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Carnevale, Lent, Shrove Tuesday

Fat Tuesday

The Carnevale of Venezia, or the Carnival of Venice, began this year on the last Saturday of January and soon, on Tuesday, it will draw to a close. Tuesday brings Shrove Tuesday, or Mardi Gras in French––Fat Tuesday. There are certain cities that we think of as central to Carnival: certainly Venice, Rio de Janeiro, and New Orleans. But Carnival is a celebration that is known far and wide, especially through Europe and Latin America.

My family is not a Carnival people––it’s just not a tradition my grandparents brought with them from their Italian villages. But Carnival is important. It is the last great indulgence before the arrival of Lent, forty days marked by somberness and penitence––and, in times past, a time of strict dietary restrictions. Carnival season, in fact, takes its name from the Latin carne levamen–– “Good-bye to the flesh.” Traditionally, the supply of meat would be finished during Carnevale until spring, and so it truly was a goodbye to the flesh, and a farewell to the provisions of winter. The traditional symbol of Carnevale in Italy is a plump man wearing a necklace of sausages about his neck. It is in stark contrast to the traditional symbol of Lent: a gaunt old woman, all skin and bones.

I love the costumes and the masks of a traditional Venetian Carnevale. It is a celebration of excess and the costumes, elaborate as they are, encourage this. Who knows who is behind each of those masks? Carnevale in Italy has its connections to celebrations of the new year, which, for the early Romans, was the First of March. The costumes and the masks come out of this tradition, for they were part of the Roman New Year celebration. The old year was dying, the new one being born. Out of that chaos came a festival of excess, and masks provided anonymity. The Romans eventually moved the start of the year to January 1, but old habits die hard: The costumes and the masks then and now give us license to be whomever we wish, at least for a little while.

In England and in the United States, Shrove Tuesday means one thing: Pancakes for supper. The meal is an easy way of using up all the eggs, milk, and sugar that remained in the larder before the 40 fasting days of Lent commenced. In Germany, the tradition for the Tuesday before Lent calls for doughnuts, and the night there is known as Fasnacht or Faschnacht. The idea is the same: using up all the remaining lard, sugar, and butter before Lent begins. But whether it is pancakes or doughnuts, there is something special about eating breakfast for dinner, or about eating homemade doughnuts after dinner. It’s a little something, nothing dramatic, just something that marks the day, something celebratory, reminding us of the importance of enjoying what we have. Once Ash Wednesday arrives, Lent will, for forty days, remind us of the brevity of things. The reality is we are very fortunate and we should do our best to remember the gifts we’ve been given… like this, another Mardi Gras, another Fasnacht, another Shrove Tuesday. And as they say in New Orleans, Laissez les bon temps rouler!

 

Image: “Festa delle Marie,” by a German photographer who goes by the name fotogoocom, was taken at the Carnevale of Venezia in 2015. Used with gratitude through Creative Commons via Wikimedia Commons.

 

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