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  • Emily Mellott: I'd probably say that Shrove Tuesday is a

  • religious holiday that's not actually a religious holiday.

  • Brian Jemmott: In my experience of Shrove Tuesday, we've

  • always had an opportunity for folks to come to church and in most cases have pancake supper.

  • Ben Maddison: Shrove Tuesday is our last opportunity to

  • sin before Lent, I always tell my congregation that you've got to make it a good one, so

  • we eat as many pancakes as we possibly can in a feast of the resurrection before lead

  • starts.

  • Kara Slade: Now, I grew up in a part of the country and

  • the central Gulf Coast where we observed Mardi Gras and Mardi Gras was a huge production.

  • We had parades and balls and all kinds of parties. The principle behind Mardi Gras and

  • Shrove Tuesday is very similar. It just works itself out a little differently from different

  • parts of the world.

  • Martin Oguike: Shrove Tuesday started as a day to go to church

  • and confess your sins before you begin the season of Lent. The word shrove is the past

  • tense of shrive, which is to go and confess your sins.

  • Emily Mellott: It's from the same impulse as Mardi Gras.

  • It's carnival. It's a goodbye party for all of the indulgences that we give up when we're

  • going into this season of Lent. Before we clear away all of the clutter in our lives,

  • we throw it a goodbye party.

  • Brian Jemmott: Coming from another part of the Anglican communion

  • Trinidad and Tobago. It's carnival Tuesday, which is in some places known as Fat Tuesday,

  • Mardi Gras, which is what that means. And that was an opportunity for folks to really

  • have a lot of revelry and be in a very partying mood.

  • Ben Maddison: As we head into penitential season, it was

  • a necessary for families in the medieval era and maybe even into the 16th and 17th centuries

  • to use up all of the goods that otherwise wouldn't get used until after Lent was done.

  • The butter, the baking, and that is why we make so many pancakes.

  • Emily Mellott: It's not in the church calendar as a special

  • religious holiday, but that because we're about to do something big, we celebrate beforehand.

  • We clear out the clutter in our lives.

  • Kara Slade: Lent is a time of abstinence or a penitent.

  • So on Shrove Tuesday or on Mardi Gras, we celebrate. It's kind of the last thing before,

  • before lent begins.

  • Brian Jemmott: The overindulgence I think is really a last

  • opportunity before we get into the solemnity of Lent to kind of overdo, because those are

  • the kinds of things that you're going to be removing from your daily life during Lent

  • so that you use them in excess on Shrove Tuesday because once Ash Wednesday hit, those things

  • that you would normally have indulged in excessively on Shrove Tuesday would perhaps not be part

  • of your regular habits during Lent beginning on Ash Wednesday.

  • Kara Slade: The word shrove comes from the same word shriven,

  • which means to confess. So there was also a tradition in some parts of historic Christianity

  • that people would make their confession on that day before Lent begins. And so this is

  • a wonderful time to come together with your church family to celebrate and to get ready

  • together for the beginning of Lent the next day. There should be a real contrast between

  • the celebratory mood of Shrove Tuesday and then the sort of solemnity of Ash Wednesday.

  • Ben Maddison: It's a joyous time. One of the things that

  • our church does is we bury the Hallelujah flag. So Hallelujah, it's a joyful word of

  • celebration. It gets used a lot during Easter, but in Lent it goes away. So one of the ways

  • that we mark that occasion is we bury it. We gather all the kids, we go outside, we

  • shout hallelujah at the top of our lungs at about 8:00, 8:30 to annoy the neighbors. And

  • then we bury it and we say goodbye for 40 days until we joyously resurrect it on the

  • same day that Christ is resurrected.

Emily Mellott: I'd probably say that Shrove Tuesday is a

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