why do we eat pancakes on shrove tuesday?

Answer 1

Pancake Day, or Shrove Tuesday, is the traditional feast day before the start of Lent on Ash Wednesday. Lent - the 40 days leading up to Easter - was traditionally a time of fasting and on Shrove Tuesday Anglo-Saxon Christians went to confession and were "shriven" (absolved from their sins). A bell would be rung to call people to confession. This came to be called the “Pancake Bell” and is still rung today.

Shrove Tuesday always falls 47 days before Easter Sunday, so the date varies from year to year and falls between February 3 and March 9. In 2007 Shrove Tuesday will fall on 20th February and on the 5th February in 2008.

Shrove Tuesday was the last opportunity to use up eggs and fats before embarking on the Lenten fast and pancakes are the perfect way of using up these ingredient.


The ingredients for pancakes can be seen to symbolise four points of significance at this time of year:
Eggs ~ Creation
Flour ~ The staff of life
Salt ~ Wholesomeness
Milk ~ Purity

Answer 2

Shroves Tuesday

Answer 3

Lent starts the next day, which is supposed to be a period of cutting back on things you shouldn't eat. The pancakes are symbolic of using up some of the foods that you are not supposed to eat over Lent, such as (I vaguely recall, it's been a long time since Sunday School) eggs and milk.

Answer 4

It is the day before Lent and, back in the days when people were religious enough to actually begin fasting the following day, it was a last chance to pig out on items that, let's face it, are quite filling.
Nowadays, we don't bother with the fasting, but stuff our faces with the pancakes anyway.

Answer 5

Shrove Tuesday heralds the beginning of fasting in Lent and the historians tell us that this is why the feasts of pancakes to use up the supplies of fat, butter and eggs - foods that were forbidden during austere Lent, became traditional.

Answer 6

Its the day before lent and during lent your supposed to give things up to remember the sacrifice Jesus made when in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights. Therefore in "the old days" people used to empty their larders to use up all left over food ready for lent. I think its just another way for supermarkets to sell pancake mix now though!

Answer 7

Beginning of lent. Jesus went into the wilderness for 40 days & nights, and apparently didn't eat. (No wonder he halucinated and met the devil)

Anyway, at lent eggs, flour etc. had to be used up so that you would 'fast' for 40 days nights. In reality it probably just meant you didn't bake bread. So pancakes were made to use up the surplus you may have.

Answer 8

Aside from it being part of the beginning of Lent, in which we rid our cupboards of unhealthy foods, pancakes represent unleavened bread, (bread baked before there was yeast to make it rise) and the type of bread found in every home during Our Lord's time on Earth.

Answer 9

Agree with the others and aren't the pancakes yummy!

Answer 10

Its to fill youself up before fasting for Lent. It is odd because you are supposed to be examining your sins or confessing on that day as well.