Shrove Tuesday is a Christian festival celebrated in many countries across the globe. It falls on the Tuesday before the beginning of Lent – a period of around six weeks leading up to Easter. During Lent, Christians give up luxuries to remember when Jesus went into the desert for 40 days to fast and pray.
The exact date of Shrove Tuesday changes from year to year. But one thing stays the same — it’s always 47 days before Easter Sunday. And yes, you guessed it, it’s always on a Tuesday!
The name comes from the old word ‘shriving’, which means to listen to someone’s sins and forgive them. In Anglo-Saxon England, Christians would go to church on Shrove Tuesday to confess their sins and clean their soul. In other words, they would be ‘shriven’.
Pancakes have become such a popular Shrove Tuesday tradition that on this day, a whopping 52 million eggs are used in the UK alone! That’s 22 million more than your average day. Egg-citing stuff!
Huddersfield Pétanque 