NORMAL LIFE: Shrove Tuesday / Pancake Day

Today is known as 'laskiainen' in Finland, the day when people eat buns and slide down snowy hills for fun. The British, the Irish, Canadians and Australians will meanwhile celebrate this day with Pancakes, if the Muslim's let us of course! With all the buns and pancakes you can eat, why do we celebrate Pancake Day? More to the point, what is Shrove Tuesday?

Bear with me as this is quite complicated. To start with, Shrove Tuesday is the name for the day before Ash Wednesday which marks the beginning of Lent. Lent marks the forty days (not including Sundays) before Easter. Lent is concerned with the preparations for Holy Week, which recalls the events leading up to Jesus' crucifixion. During this time, Christian's refrain from eating eggs and milk so the idea was to use these up to make Pancakes.

When I thought I would take five minutes to check this out, I thought I would find something interesting, but no! Pancake, anyone?