Instead of Fat Tuesday, this day is formally known as Shrove Tuesday here...but informally the day is PANCAKE TUESDAY! How excitingly delicious :-)
The tradition is tied with the Lent season. Families would try to get rid of all of their dairy and sugar products before they gave them up for forty days. In so doing, they would celebrate by having pancakes for dinner.
I discovered, however, that Irish pancakes are different than American ones. In actuality, they really mean a crepe. The tradition includes having contests to see who can flip the crepe the highest and with the most rotations. Many towns in Ireland and the UK also hold community pancake races. Moms and kids line up for a relay race armed with frying pans. They run as fast as they can while flipping crepes. Rather than landing back in the pan, the crepes often fly all over the place. They even held a couple of races in St. Stephen's Green today and people were lined up around the corner to eat their obligatory pancake.
The Irish pre-Lenten celebration is much less decadent than the New Orleans Mardi Gras or the Venetian Mask Party (which was explained to me by Veronica), but the tradition is also more family-oriented. It is very sweet in its simplicity (and it is DELICIOUS!!!)
No comments:
Post a Comment