Saturday, February 21, 1998

Pancake suppers mark Shrove Tuesday

By LORETTA FULTON / Abilene Reporter-News

Since 1445, with occasional lapses and revivals, women in the English community of Olney have run the streets flipping pancakes in a frying pan, trying to see who can reach the church first with an intact pancake -- all for a greeting from the vicar and a smooch from the bellringer.

In New Orleans, the festivities are a little more raucous, with costumed revelers traipsing Bourbon Street looking for more than a kiss from a bellringer.

Whether it's a Shrove Tuesday pancake supper at your local church or a night to remember at the Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, celebration in New Orleans, it all means the same thing -- Lent is about to begin.

From the frying pan into the fire, so to speak, Christians in some traditions get their gaity over with on Tuesday and begin the 40-day penitential period of Lent the following day on Ash Wednesday.

Several Abilene churches will have Shrove Tuesday pancake suppers and Ash Wednesday services.

The Ash Wednesday service isn't a "must" for Lutherans, said the Rev. Laverne Janssen, but "it's usually quite well attended" as it is in many other liturgical churches.

Ash Wednesday services are in two parts with the imposition of the ashes on a person's forehead in the shape of a cross, accompanied by the words "ashes to ashes...dust to dust," followed by the Holy Communion.

The ashes, which are created by burning palm fronds from the previous year's Palm Sunday service, remind us "that we are but mortals," said Janssen, who is minister at Our Savior Lutheran Church and vacancy pastor at Zion Lutheran.

In most traditions, the imposition of ashes is followed by the Holy Communion "to remind us of the good news that Jesus went to the cross for us and for our salvation," Janssen said.

With Ash Wednesday, the 40-day Lenten period of reflection and contemplation begins, culminating with Easter Sunday.

The season of Lent wasn't begun until the late sixth century when it was established by Pope Gregory the Great. The word "Lent" comes into our language from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning "spring," or "lengthing of days," according to <I>A Pilgrimage in Faith<I> by Franklin C. Ferguson.

Lent "signified a period of 40 days, representative of our Lord's 40 days of fasting in the desert prior to assuming his ministry," Ferguson wrote.

In some traditions, notably Roman Catholic, people give up something for Lent, possibly even fasting, meaning they give up meat and eat sparse servings of other foods.

In her book, <I>Easter and Its Customs,<I> Christina Hole tells of traditional ways, including the Pancake Race at Olney in Buckinghamshire, England, in which Christians have observed the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday.

"In earlier times when the Lenten fast was far more rigorous than it is now," Hole wrote, "it was celebrated almost everywhere by wild revelries, games, sports, dances and riotous antics."

The Shrove Tuesday pancake supper may be the most familiar to Americans. It is traditionally held in Episcopal, or Anglican, churches, including Heavenly Rest and St. Mark's in Abilene, as well as some other churches.

In pre-Reformation days, Hole noted, "good Christians were expected to prepare for the fast by confessing their sins and being shriven, a pious custom from which the name of shrove is derived."

After the Reformation, the bell that once called the faithful to "be shriven" or penitent, became the Pancake Bell, Hole noted, "the signal for sports and games to begin and for pancakes to be made."

The pancakes were a good way for housewives to dispose of all the remaining fats and butter before the Lenten fast began, Hole wrote.

And, they were also a good excuse for a race to the church and a chance to steal a kiss from the bellringer.