It’s Mardi Gras, also known as Fat Tuesday or shrove Tuesday. Which means only one thing: pancakes.
Yes, in preparation for the beginning of Lent and the ribald 40 days of fasting and penitence that brings, Christians of various denominations gather this evening… to eat flapjacks.
I’ve never understood this tradition and, though I’ve looked it up numerous times and know that there’s a reason for it, I can never remember that reason for more than the time it takes to close wikipedia and walk across the room.
I do have childhood memories of pancakes being consumed in a church basement meeting room, after which there was a large bundt cake into which someone had baked a tiny plastic baby. Whoever found, and failed to choke on, the doll was dubbed king or queen.
And people wonder how I can be both serious and tongue-in-cheek about religion.
Seriously? Let’s prepare for death and solemnity by lauding IHOP and flashing people for party beads? I know I haven’t read the WHOLE thing, but the parts of the Bible that I’ve read so far don’t seem to include anything about all that.
I mean, except for that bit in the apocrypha:
“And Jesus spoke to the disciples and said ‘verily I say to you, let us prepare the way for sacrifice, for as it is written one of you will betray me.’ And the disciples said to him ‘but Lord, how shall we prepare? Through fasting and pious deeds?’ And Jesus looked across the crowds and said ‘yes, but the night before all of this, there shall be pancakes. But lo, there shall be no fruited toppings, nor acoutrements from the vine or the tree, for on a pancake they are an abomination. Let there also be a cake. One with no frosting for the children will already be filled with the syrup of the pancakes. If thou lovest me, place in this cake a small doll but let neither the man nor the woman cease vigilance, lest the children who consume it eat the doll.’ The disciples listened to what He said, but they were confused.”
It may have been years since I’ve been an active member of any one congregation, whether I’ve attended services or not. But here’s the thing; that faith, that feeling of being imbued by the spirit, that…need… for pancakes on a Tuesday evening? That never goes away.
