St Simon’s Episcopal Church

Shrove Tuesday: Pancake Day

Many villages in England hold Pancake Races on Shrove Tuesday. The custom is thought to have begun in Olney in 1445. A woman had lost track of time and was busy cooking pancakes when she heard the church bells ring, calling the faithful to be shriven of their sins. She raced out of her house and ran all the way to church, still holding her frying pan and wearing her apron

St Simon’s Episcopal Church, 1522 Highway 138 NE, Conyers, GA 30013       tel: 770 483 3242/2036   

email:  info@stsimonsconyers.net    Web Administrator lmaher@stsimonsconyers.net        Webmail

Shrove Tuesday is the day before Lent starts. It's a day of penitence, to clean the soul, and a day of celebration as the last chance to feast before Lent begins. Shrove comes from shrive, to be cleaned of your sins.

During Lent there are many foods that some Christians - historically and today - would not eat: foods such as meat and fish, fats, eggs, and milky foods. So that no food was wasted, families would have a feast on the shriving Tuesday, and eat up all the foods that wouldn't last the forty days of Lent without going off.

The need to eat up the fats gave rise to the French name Mardi Gras ('fat Tuesday'). Pancakes became associated with Shrove Tuesday as they were a dish that could use up all the eggs, fats and milk in the house with just the addition of flour.

Ash Wednesday: The First Day Of Lent

Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent for Western Christian churches. It's a day of penitence to clean the soul before the Lent fast. We hold special services at which worshippers are marked with ashes as a symbol of death and sorrow for sin. The ashes are made from the burned palm crosses from Palm Sunday the year before.

Palm Sunday celebrates Jesus's triumphant entry into Jerusalem, so when the crosses used in the Palm Sunday service are converted to ashes, the worshippers are reminded that defeat and crucifixion swiftly followed triumph. But using the ashes to mark the cross on the believer's forehead symbolises that through Christ's death and resurrection, all Christians can be free from sin.

As the minister or priest marks each worshipper on the forehead in a cross shape, they say Remember you are dust and unto dust you shall return, or a similar phrase based on God's sentence on Adam in Genesis 3:19. The cross shape reminds us of the cross marked on our foreheads at baptism. At some churches, the

worshippers leave with the mark still on their forehead so that they carry the sign of the cross out into the world. At other churches, the service ends with the ashes being washed off as a sign that the participants have been cleansed of their sins.