Fat Tuesday

Bear guiding.  A Polish Shrove Tuesday tradition.  No, I don't understand it.

Yesterday I marked Clean Monday.

Today is Fat Tuesday, or Mardi Gras.

The day marks the day before Ash Wednesday on the liturgical calendar of the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church.  Like the other major day noted in the United States, setting aside Christmas and Easter, which derives from the Catholic liturgical calendar, St. Patrick's Day, the day is celebrated widely in the US by folks who have no idea whatsoever what it marks.

The day is called "Fat" Tuesday, or Mardi Gras, in French as it marked the day when people in Louisiana, French speaking Catholics, attempted to use up excess fats in their household that would otherwise go to waste during the Lenten season.  The Lenten Fast in the Latin Rite is much less strict than it once was, so this isn't a problem today, but the tradition of having a big pre Lenten celebration remains.  In its original form, it was a major Franco North American celebration, but wasn't the sort of weird event its devolved into, featuring topless women and beads and the like.  Indeed, quite the opposite is true.  It had a religious nature to it.

This is also true in many other predominantly Catholic countries around the globe.  In Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries the day is also widely celebrated, with the use of a term which actually very closely approximates Mardi Gras or the use of the term Carnival, which means "to put away meat", derived from Latin.  Carnival is celebrated in some Catholic European cultures under that name as well, including southern Germany.  Germans also call the day Fastnachtsdienstag, Faschingsdienstag, Karnevaldienstag and Veilschendienstag.  The day is marked by a partial day off from school as well as parades and the observance of some distinctly odd German customs.

In English speaking countries where, outside of Ireland, the Reformation took them out of the Catholic world in the 1500s, the tradition none the less remains, reflecting how strong the Catholic customs were even where Protestantism came in.  Shrove Tuesday is widely observed in Anglican circles. "Shrove" in this context derives from an Old English word for "absolve", and it reflected the day which people reflected on their lives and resolved to work on them over Lent.  Lent is still a penitential season in the Anglican Communion, but has been much less observed than in the Apostolic faiths where its a major seasons.  Having said that, at least by observation, there seem to be a revival of Lenten observation in Anglican circules.

In English speaking countries today is also Pancake Tuesday or Pancake Day for the same reason that French speaking countries call it Mardi Gras.  Pancakes are made with fat and flour and there was an effort to use up fat by making big pancake breakfasts on this day.

Nearly every country with a Christian heritage, except perhaps those in North American, have a celebration on this day with a strong regional, national and Christian aspect to them, including those nations who followed Luther into the Reformation. The Icelanders, for example, feast today with salted fish and meats.  It's interesting how widespread this custom is, and in some ways makes the American celebration of it seem a bit poor in comparison, outside of those areas of the Louisiana and Texas where the locals are celebrating it for real.

As a final note, why would people be so focused, as part of this, in using up the household fats and meat?

Well, before refrigeration, and with a stricter fast in place, those things weren't going to last until after Easter.