Pancake Day/Fat Tuesday/Mardi Gras
 

What is eaten by celebrants round your way? Here it's Packzi (pronounced Poonchkey) -rich, filled donuts. It's a polish thing. In the UK it's pancakes (crepes), traditionally with lemon and sugar.

And are there other non-food celebrations where you are? local parades?

do you give up stuff for Lent? Even if you're not Christian?

About the only Mardis Gras tradition I know is "King's Cake," which as far as I can tell is just a plain old white cake with garish green, yellow, and purple icing, and a tiny plastic baby baked inside. If you choke on the baby you're the winner, or something.

But in general I have no idea it's happening, unless someone mentions it. It's not a big holiday around here.

I guess that's why Prince William and Ms. Kate were flipping pancakes--didn't make sense to me before.

we have Kings Cake here, too (pretty close to Clod, in texas-sizes), but no other food that I'm aware. lots and lots of mardi gras parties, big street festivals, etc. (notice I'm sitting at home, though). We have lenten food of course; lots of fish, capirotada (Mexican bread pudding).

We don't do anything for Fat Tuesday/Mardi Gras around here. Just another day for fry bread and Navajo tacos as far as we're concerned. I have a friend who gives up chocolate for Lent. :eek: I don't try to give up anything. I have shitty willpower.

I was flipping pancakes last night. Not one dropped. not one burned. Probably because I only had one pan, though. Took for blooming ever.

I only borrow religious holidays that are fun, though, so no Lent for me :) It amazes me the number of people round here giving things up -before I moved here I thought that was an archaic thing.

I know a guy who gave up beer for lent but got special dispensation from the priest to drink on St Patrick's Day. Silly.

I got Zatarain's Red Beans and Rice and some smoked sausage but was too tired to cook it last night. It'll have to be Fat Wednesday. I was in bed at 6:30. Read for a while. Slept. Read for a while. Slept.

Yesterday is now history. Thank FSM!

I knew a guy who gave up beer for lent. He swtiched to wine

Again, a difference in our UK experience.
I've been BAFFLED by the amount of people in different places in the UK who have asked me, "What are you giving up for Lent?" and gone on to tell me their sacrifices (often for no religious reason I can discern)
WHAT?! You haven't been to church since you got married! Not even Christmas and/ or Easter?
It thought it was perhaps an admin fashion, then a diet fashion, then a fashion fashion... who knows...?

In my C of E school, only two people I know of are giving up for Lent.
Again, I always thought it was a Catholic thing, but the conversation was such I didn't want to ask.

Mum & Dad are sacrificing this year as ever. So we had Shrove Tuesday (lemon and lo-cal sugar for me) and they went to Mass today for Ash Wednesday. They may even have fasted today, not sure as I was at school.

My two (crepe-style) pancakes were yummy.
BTW - Betty Crocker sells "pancake mix" in the UK which makes UK style pancakes. That's a new one on me.

I never give anything up for lent, but this year is an exception. I decided to give up wine for lent.

I've been drinking a little more wine lately and I noticed that around the time of my increase in wine consumption, I've also had a bunch of itchy spots on my face. Not sure if the two are related, so I figure 40 days without wine is enough time to test the theory. I hope the itchy spots go away, but at the same time, I don't. You know what I mean? I don't drink enough that there's any sort of problem. Just a glass or maybe two a few nights a week. And I'm not giving up alcohol altogether for lent. When I get around to it, I might buy some beer. But beer is so filling and bloat inducing, I probably won't drink it as often as the yummy wine. So I'll be drinking less in general.

Anyway, I'd been thinking about it recently, and lent seems like a decent enough excuse.

I have nothing against it per se - I respected (Big V I think?) for adhering to Ramadam as a social experience.
It only bugs me when people really don't know what it is, and then make out they have the higher moral ground.

Glatt, I will refrain from asking you what the Immaculate Conception was.

I was just reading in the free newspaper this morning or yesterday that they just came out with a new translation for the official US catholic bible that gets rid of "virgin" in describing Mary. I suppose that gets rid of the whole Immaculate Conception thing right there. She's now described as "young."

Lent makes a certain kind of sense to me, based on the turn of the seasons, and the fact that it's the end of winter when food supplies were scarce. Thus one historically HAD to give up things because there just weren't any.

OK, so I'mm'a probably offend here, but I have to ask.... what is it with the ash this year? My dad taught at Catholic school, so I've been familiar forever with the concept of a dot of ash on the forehead from early morning mass. It's a dot, it wears off during the day. Wikipedia tells me it's a cross, but I've never seen that. But this year, I encountered several people who looked like they face-planted in a bonfire, even late in the evening. I was going to keep this to myself, but my walking partner brought it up this morning, mentioning that she had seen a couple of evening TV presenters who looked like they had elaborate forehead tattoos. Not a cross, but a huge swirling pattern. So it seems the humbling ash is becoming a f-ash-ion statement. or is this just me? and her?

NO! SAY IT AINT SO!

Don't know about up there but down here it's very serious. i am religious myself but not of the catholic nature. on ash wednesday you definitely know who is catholic and who is not. just sayin.

To me, Ash Wednesday refers to February 16th 1983, when devestating bushfires swept through the Adelaide Hills (where I was living at the time) and parts of Victoria, killing 86 people.

For years I thought the day was named after the fires, not the other way around. It made perfect sense.

My school sent me home, where I would be "safe". Duh, no-one else was there. Rest of the family were in the city and couldn't have got back. Apparently I got the place fully prepared - sprinklers on roof, mops and buckets on standby, ladders in position etc etc - but thank god the firefighters held it at the Freeway, maybe 10kms to the north, because I was 10 years old and realistically, I would have had little chance.

I also remain kind of pissed off at the school. They just wanted us off their hands, not their responsiblity, I think.

glatt: funny. I love beer, I recently tried to switch to red wine because I drink so much less. it was actually working, but then Trader Joe's scuppered me by running out of the wine I like, and nothing else within the budget compares.

I don't doubt the seriousness of it, but I've be here 10 years and familiar with ash weds all my life..... and I've ever seen these huge splodges before -always the discrete dash

ZenGum. I can't image how terrifying that must have been, and don't blame you for being angry at the school.

How many hours were you at home by yourself before you were able to be in the same place as the rest of the family?

I really don't remember. I was always an independent type, and I probably didn't grasp the situation enough to be as scared as I should have been.

I don't know what the deal is, but I noticed it here too. A fair number of people walking around with huge ash crosses on their foreheads instead of the typical small smudge. Maybe a memo came down from the pope or something. That's one thing the Catholics have going for them. Serious leadership from the top. All on the same page.

The priests these days have WAY bigger thumbs than they used to.

Yeah we got big ol' black crosses here, too. Might have something to do with the changes in the liturgy coming up. Or might have to do with last year's crop of palms.

I wonder....

http://www.monikateal.com/files/1558...Animals-3D.jpg

http://s7.thisnext.com/media/largest...n/058A8A75.jpg

The tradition of the "King Cake" requires that the person who choke on the baby buy the cake next year.

it's like fruitcake, only not as reusable.

Mardi Gras isn't as much fun since the Philadelphia Police tightened security on South Street and they don't have the riots anymore.

Sincere Catholic people should NOT highlight the comment below.



Father, that's not my forehead!

It's okay, that's not my thumb...

Probably just as well. Was everyone else ok when you were all back home together? What did the school say when they sent you home? "Everyone is dismissed. Don't get caught in the fire on the way home." I only remember that particular day very vaguely as we lived in a non-hills suburb and those who came down from the hills were few and far between.

Sibling got lost on Mount Remarkable overnight when he was 8 and it was probably a similar kind of calmness that got him through that situation. If he'd panicked, he would have been totally stuffed.

I wish I was as calm.

Any rosacea in your family? Sounds like it could be the beginning. I hope not.

Saw it too the other day and was all WTF?
I think Glatt is right. Catholics need to rally under their cross especially in light of all the bad press lately. They need to let their figurative freak flags fly and let the world know that a few hundred bad apples don't spoil the whole church. To paraphrase "a liberal is just a conservative who hasn't gotten mugged yet" A devout Catholic is just a lapsed Catholic who hasn't been molested by a priest yet.

saw this:

I woke up to an empty room

No more angels watching over me.
No more demons to be held at bay
by the invocation of
an Anglicized version
of a Hellenized version
of a Hebrew name

I woke up to an empty room:

Just a room. Four walls, ceiling, floor.
Just a room. Nothing more.

I woke up to an empty room
and embraced the solid air.

I woke up to an empty room and knew myself

awake.

Copyright © 1999 Secular Pagan
Used by permission

Only the ones who have been molested have the big smudges on their heads.;)