Shrove Tuesday

Today is Shrove Tuesday. And by Shrove Tuesday, I mean the day before Ash Wednesday, the day when Lent officially begins. Some of you may know it as the Mardis Gras celebration that is also called Fat Tuesday.  Traditionally, my family either goes to church to have a feast of pancakes or we stay home and I make a mile-high stack of flapjacks for the entire family. This feast of butter, milk and flour is a symbolic way of clearing out one’s cupboards for the upcoming Lenten fast which is in preparation for Easter.

Now don’t get me wrong, we don’t fast at our house.  I would never expect for my children to give up food for the forty days of Lent—they would never make it and neither would my husband and I. But what I do expect is for my family to have some kind of awareness as to why we aren’t having any gooey chocolate cake around the house for the next month. I want them to be aware that we are taking the decadence out of our lives in a somber preparation for Easter. Through simple acts of kindness and compassion, I believe that my children will learn that Lent can be a time of giving and it no longer has to be a time a misery and suffering.

So at dinner I told the kids that we were entering Lent and that we would either have to give something up or take some kind of good deed on.  At first glance, my teenager says, "yum, pancakes". But on a closer inspection he remembers that Shrove Tuesday means Lent. He then informs me that he is now an atheist; my 9 year old says that he doesn’t want to give up sweets but he was willing to do some extra chores and my little girl said that she would give up M&M’s. I think it’s going to be a very long Lenten season.