Today is Shrove Tuesday (also known as Fat Tuesday to all those party animals in New Orleans)! It actually is a big deal to those of us who observe the season of Lent. Notice I said observe. It is not a time of celebration (like Advent), but a time of reflection, sacrifice, and preparation for the ultimate sacrifice that Jesus made for all of us. I am prayerfully considering what I will sacrifice this lenten season, and I look forward to what that sacrifice will mean to me by the time we celebrate our Risen Savior on Easter morning....Oh what a beautiful day that will be!
For today, It's all about the pancakes!!!
Shrove Tuesday gets its name from the ritual of shriving, when the faithful confessed their sins to the local priest and recieved forgiveness before the Lenten season began.
As far back as 1000 AD, "to shrive" meant to hear confessions. (Trivia note: the term survives today in the expression "short shrift" or giving little attention to anyone's explanations or excuses). Historically, Shrove Tuesday also marked the beginning of the 40-day Lenten fasting period when the faithful were forbidden by the church to consume meat, butter, eggs or milk. However, if a family had a store of these foods they all would go bad by the time the fast ended on Easter Sunday. What to do?
Solution: use up the milk, butter and eggs no later than Shrove Tuesday. And so, with the addition of a little flour, the solution quickly presented itself in... pancakes. And lots of 'em. Tonight we'll join our church family for a big pancake feast! How awesome is that?
Hey, I'm not one to buck tradition!!!! What about you?
Do you observe Lent?
(and no, you don't have to be Catholic...
I'm not)
He's our all boy, athletic, Daddy loving, amazingly messy, school adoring, people pleasing, ultra sensitive, fruit craving, mercifully giving, bed hopping, dangerously destructive, absolutely precious first born.
She's our extremely funny, big hearted, completely dramatic, very talkative, nurturing, terribly sassy, independent, fashion forward, chocolate craving, brown eyed, Mommy helping, sorta sneaky, beautifully stunning second born!
3 kind words:
Hey, Lady. :) I just wanted to let you know I posted the snow video I promised.
I am not catholic either, but am really looking for a good Bible study to bring myself through during this lent season. I am needing to go deeper, this is a great time to do it. Even though it is very somber, I am still celebrating because of the amazing victory His blood brought. YAY!!!!
Red Beans and Rice on Lundi Gras and pancakes today! And I always give up caffeine. There's plenty of things I could up, but that's the one that's the hardest. It's painful (actual PHYSICAL pain the first couple of days--oh, I am not looking forward to tomorrow's mid-afternoon headache) but it's worth it.
In PA where we lived they celebrated with Fassnacht Day. The bakeries and churches would use up those ingredients making fassnacht's (like a long-john donut with no filling). It's huge up there. I never cared for them - just not sweet enough for my tooth!
Personally, we don't do anything to celebrate lent.
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