Happy Shrove Tuesday, Pancake Day, Mardi Gras, Carnival, Fastnachtsdienstag.

Holy Ghost in Denver.  While you cannot see it in this photograph, opposite this wall is a row of confessionals.  Confessions are heard during Mass.

Shrove Tuesday.

Shrove derives from "shrive", which means to give absolution. So, while I don't know how many parishes offer confession the day prior to Ash Wednesday, that's what it refers to.

It's also called Shrovetide, the evening before the Shrove, which makes more sense, really, reflecting the penitential nature of Lent.

Pancake Day.

It's also Pancake Day in England and strongly English countries, for the custom of eating pancakes on this day.  Pancakes use a fair amount of fat in them and this was part of the Lenten practice of abstaining from fat during Lent.  It's also therefore one of the odd little ways where England's history as a once deeply Catholic nation is retained.

In Ireland the day is known as Máirt Inide, from the Latin initium (Jejūniī), "beginning of Lent".  It's still associated heavily with pancakes.  That's sort of indicative of Ireland's history of being heavily impacted by the English.

Of some interest here, potentially, the Anglican Church retains confession, but not the requirement that its members annual confess, like Catholics have.  Catholicism is now outstripping Anglicanism in actual practice in the UK.  It's often noted that Catholicism has declined in Ireland, a prediction that the Church made at the time of the Anglo Irish War when it did not want to become involved in the Irish government and was forced to against its will, but the Irish remain very heavily Catholic.

Mardi Gras in New Orleans in 1937.

Mardi Gras.

Of course, it's also Mardi Gras, or "Fat Tuesday", from the custom at one time of trying to use up all the fats in the house on this day, in French speaking countries. Contrary to American belief, Mardi Gras is in fact not unique to New Orleans but occurs everywhere that French speaking people are located.

Knights of Revelry parade down Royal Street in Mobile during the 2010 Mardi Gras season, By Carol M. Highsmith - This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID highsm.05396.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11990882

American Mardi Gras, or rather American New Orleans Mardi Gras, has become heavily Americanized which means, like all American holidays, it's associated with booze.  It is always a big party wherever it occurs, but the weird boozy topless event is an American thing, not a real French thing or culturally French.

Carnival in Rome, 1650.

Carnival and Fastnachtsdienstag

Carnival, from the Medieval Latin carne vale, "farewell meat",  is the same holiday in other Romance Language speaking countries.  The same sort of linguistic intent is found in the German name for the day, Fastnachtsdienstag.  The latter reflects the fact that European Lutherans observe Lent, but in the same fashion as the Anglicans.  It's not associated with the same Canon Law that it is with Catholics, but the observance remains.

We've actually touched on all of this, fwiw, before.

All of these days reflected a period when the Lenten fast was much more severe than it currently is.  People were using up fats as they wouldn't keep for the forty days of Lent.  Now, in the Latin Rite, there's no restriction on using fats at all, the obligation to fast is just on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, when the obligation to abstain from meat also exist, during Lent.  All the Friday's of Lent are meatless for Catholics.

In the Eastern Rite of the Catholic Church the fasting rules are much more strict.  Starting on Pure Monday, yesterday,   As Catholic News Service explains it:

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — In the eyes of Latin-rite Catholics, the extent of Eastern Catholics’ Lenten fasting and abstinence is perceived as particularly strict.

The traditional Byzantine fast for Great Lent includes one meal a day from Monday to Friday, and abstinence from all animal products, including meat, fish with backbones, dairy products and eggs, as well as oil and wine for the entire period of Lent. Shellfish are permitted.

Fasting and abstinence are maintained on Saturdays, Sundays and on the eve of special feast days, although loosened to permit the use of oil and wine. On important feast days, such as the Annunciation and Palm Sunday, fish may be eaten.

“Oil and wine were restricted because, in the past, they were stored in animal skin,” explained Mother Theodora, the “hegumena” or abbess of the Byzantine Catholic Christ the Bridegroom Monastery in Burton, Ohio. “Though this is no longer the case, the tradition continues.”

There are varying degrees of fasting, from stricter to more lenient, depending on one’s work and state of health. Monks and nuns will often submit to the most strict fasting.

Holy Week is not considered part of Great Lent but “an additional, more intense time of fasting and prayer,” said Mother Theodora.

However, Eastern Catholics don’t plunge into fasting and abstinence cold turkey. “Meatfare” and “Cheesefare” weeks help them enter into the Great Fast gradually. By Meatfare Sunday, one week before the start of Lent, Eastern Catholics will have emptied their refrigerators and pantries of meat products. By Cheesefare Sunday, they will have cleared out all of their egg and dairy products, ready to enter into the Great Fast that evening, after Forgiveness Vespers.

In an effort to keep Eastern Christians faithful, yet creative, in the kitchen, cookbooks with fast-friendly recipes have been published.

By Laura Ieraci, Catholic News Service.  The rules for the Eastern Orthodox are similar, although I'm never certain of the degree to which the Orthodox are required to observe them.  Orthodox churches using the "Old Calendar" start Lent this year on February 23.

With all this, Catholics in the US enter Annual Question Time and the time of slightly difficult observances, the latter taking note of the fact that unlike some past times in the country, we're not likely to get killed or anything, so its nothing like it used to be.  Rather, as the US is not only heavily Protestant, but Puritan, Lenten practices baffle non Catholics.

Puritans disapproved of pretty much everything, including observing Christmas as a special day, so Lent was way beyond the Pale for them.  English culture, on the other hand, loved sports, so when the English dumped the Calvinist, which they did as soon as they could, their love of sports came roaring back. American culture has been impacted by English culture in every way, so Americans love sports but don't understand the Apostolic Faiths very well, in many instances, and in fact sometimes fail to realize that their own branches of Christianity are fairly recent innovations not reflecting the original Apostolic faith.

So for Lent, including its beginning, and its end in Holy Week, Americans just don't really have any observations, other than using Mardi Gras, like St. Patrick's Day, as an excuse to drink.  They way it shows up for Catholics, however, is that things that are fairly easy to observe in Catholic countries, like Holy Week or Ash Wednesday, are a lot tougher to do in the US, and of course, you'll be getting a lot of questions if you are Catholic about "why do you do that" and "why can't you . . .".

Tuesday, March 9, 1943. Rommel departs. Air Force limits. De La Rocque arrested. Goebbels looks in the Stable. We Will Never Die opens. Mardi Gras.

Erwin Rommel was recalled by Hitler from North Africa and put on medical leave. General Hans-Jürgen von Arnim assumed command of the Afrika Korps, and would remain in command until its surrender.  Effectively, Hitler had rescued Rommel.

Von Arnim.

Von Arnim bore a remarkable resemblance to actor Keenan Wynn, who played Col. "Bat" Guano in Dr. Strangelove.

Wynn, left.

Von Arnim would go into captivity in the UK and then later the U.S.  He would not enter the Bundesheer following its establishment, perhaps due to age, and died in 1962 at age 73.

Sarah Sundin notes on her blog:

Today in World War II History—March 9, 1943: US Eighth Air Force Central Medical Establishment recommends 25-mission combat tour for bomber crewmen and 200 hours or 50 missions for fighter pilots.

Of note, making it through 25 bomber missions at the time was against the odds.  Also, I didn't know that there was a limit for fighter pilots.

De La Rocque.

French right wing political figure François de La Rocque, who had gone from accepting the French surrender and Petain's rule to being a secret opponent of it and founder of a right wing resistance movement, was arrested by the Germans. Regarded by some as a precursor to de Gaulle, he would survive the war and die in 1946 at age 60.

De La Rocque had interestingly gone from the far right into moderation prior to the war, first being part of the Croix de Feu and then being a founder of the French Social Party.  The latter party was a combination of conservative and corporatist, but it was not anti-democratic. Some credit it with giving the French middle class an alternative to fascism, thereby preventing fascism from rising in France.

German poster in Dutch, part of an effort to recruit occupied Europeans to German arms out of fear of Communism.

German propagandist Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary

The anti-Bolshevik theme is the best horse in the stable.

Goebbels' comments are something that are frighteningly relevant in our current society.  Communism was the enemy of mankind, but so was Nazism.  Indeed, they both shared the common trait of mass murder as a central element of their ethos, which gave the regimes an odd sense of being constantly imperiled by huge plots, in their view, which necessitated murder, in their view, which in turn made millions of people culpable, and therefore loyal, through guilt.  

Victory or Bolshevism was the theme of this poster, which ironically portrayed starving Germans in the manner of which recalls Holocaust victims.  After 1943 the theme of this poster was in fact becoming increasingly true, although victory was no longer possible, as the Red Army was now advancing toward the German frontier.  Germans would have recalled that being a threat during the Russo Polish War of the early 1920s, when Trotsky seriously imagined entering Germany after defeating Poland, but now it was rapidly becoming an inevitability, which the German government implicitly acknowledged through this poster.  In fact, the German government would take no action to withdraw the civilian population from Prussia, although individual German commanders sometimes did, which mean that thousands of German men were shot and tens of thousands of German women raped when the Red Army entered the country.  The final months of the war would be a combat blood bath as German soldiers often went down fighting attempting to let the civilian population get out, a situation which was brought upon them by a barbarous Nazi government.

The Nazis, right from the onset, portrayed themselves as the cultural defenders against Communism, which made many forget, and then adopt, their radical views which were not "conservative" in any real sense. After reaching an accord with the Soviets just prior to World War Two, this was downplayed, but it was ramped back up again prior to Operation Barbarossa and kept at a fever pitch through the remainder of the war.  The message to Germans was that the Nazis were the only defense of Western culture against an "alien" Communism, although Communism itself was originally a German movement.  The message was sufficient for many Germans, including high ranking ones, to put aside their doubts about Nazism on the basis that it seemed to be, based upon what they were hearing, their only alternative to Communism.

Of course, for millions of Germans, the end of the war and Germany's fighting it out past mid 1943 would bring Communism to them.

By way of contemporary analogy, millions of Americans today have been listening, and continue to, to populist propagandist who spread lies and whip up panic over their being the only alternative to "wokeism".  Tucker Carlson and his ilk portray the far populist right as the only means of combating a host of truly concerning liberal ideas.  By espousing lies, they bring those ideas closer to implementation.

We Will Never Die, a Jewish pageant featuring spectacular artwork (copyright protected) on its cover, opened on the East Coast.  It acknowledged that it was held in memory of what it then thought to be Europe's 2,000,000 then Jewish dead, showing that knowledge of the Holocaust was in fact widespread, contrary to what some will claim.

Today was Mardi Gras for 1943.  On the same day, readers of the nation's newspapers learned that the wartime ban on sliced bread had been lifted the prior day.  The ban had been to save steel needed for slicing machines.

Pancake Day.

 Amongst other things, the Tuesday before Latin Rite Lent is called Pancake Day.

They can be sweet, and they use up fats, so they helped prepare for Lenten fasting in this fashion.