50 Fun Facts About Shrove Tuesday

'Short shrift', today a curt brush-off, originally named the hurried confession granted to whom?

Condemned prisoners got a short shrift, a rushed confession before execution; shrift is the noun from shrive, the verb whose past tense gives Shrove Tuesday its name. Shakespeare's Richard III has the first printed use.

In Newfoundland's fortune-telling Shrove Tuesday pancakes, a hidden nail means the finder will become, or marry, what?

A carpenter is the nail's promise, while a coin means riches, a pencil stub a teacher and a holy medal a religious calling; families cook the tokens in so children can read their futures.

What prize traditionally awaits the winner of Olney's pancake race at the church door?

A kiss from the verger, the 'kiss of peace', greets the winner at St Peter and St Paul's; the race had lapsed until the vicar revived it in 1948, and it has been timed against a Kansas rival since 1950.

On Iceland's Bolludagur, what do children do to their parents to earn cream buns?

Children spank them with a paper stick, decorated with coloured strips, chanting 'bolla, bolla, bolla!' until the buns appear; Iceland took the custom from Denmark and Norway in the 19th century.

Spanish towns close carnival on Ash Wednesday with a mock funeral, painted by Goya, for which creature?

A sardine, usually an effigy, is paraded and then set alight in the Entierro de la Sardina, a burial of the past so society can be reborn; Goya painted the Madrid version in the 1810s.

Which plastic-lemon juice brand marketed Shrove Tuesday as its own 'Lemon Day'?

Jif ran the slogan 'Don't forget the pancakes on Jif Lemon Day', and defended its squeezy plastic lemon all the way to the House of Lords, which in 1990 stopped a rival selling juice in a lookalike.

What did the Fastelavn barrel that Danish children smash open for sweets once hold?

A live cat was once shut inside, and beating the barrel to drive it out stood for chasing away evil; today a painted cat suffices, and the children who break the barrel are crowned Cat Queen and Cat King.

Which future king made Ashbourne's Shrovetide football 'Royal' in 1928 by starting play?

Edward VIII, then heir to the throne, 'turned up' the ball in 1928, and his great-nephew Charles repeated the honour as heir in 2003, throwing it into the crowd from a raised plinth.

Which English town, birthplace of the co-operative movement, cooked the 15-metre Guinness record pancake in 1994?

Rochdale saw the Co-operative Union cook it on 13 August 1994, 15.01 m wide and 3 tonnes, 150 years after the Rochdale Pioneers opened their shop; Guinness still listed it as the largest ever made 20 years later.

In France, crêpes are the traditional dish of which 2 February feast, when a coin is held in one hand while flipping?

La Chandeleur, Candlemas, is France's crêpe day: flipping the first one with the right hand while the left holds a gold coin is said to bring a year of prosperity.

Which US state's German-descended communities fry fasnacht doughnuts on Fastnacht Day, their name for Shrove Tuesday?

Pennsylvania's Dutch counties around Lancaster, York and Berks keep Fastnacht Day; the doughnuts were a way to empty the pantry of the fat, sugar and butter that Lent forbade.

Finland's Laskiainen, its Shrove Tuesday, is usually described as a mid-winter festival of which activity?

Sledding down snow or ice tracks is the Laskiainen pastime, paired with pea soup with ham and a cream bun; the name may come from laskeutua, to descend, or laskea, to count the days to Easter.

Veilchendienstag, one German name for Shrove Tuesday, translates as the Tuesday of which flower?

Violet Tuesday sits beside Fastnachtsdienstag, Faschingsdienstag and Karnevalsdienstag as German names for the day, which brings fancy dress and a partial school holiday; Rose Monday comes the day before.

Historians trace the German carnival word Fastnacht to the verb 'fasten', which means what?

To fast is the root: Fastnacht is the eve of the fast, and historians around Werner Mezger refuted the rival folk etymologies, showing that the tradition itself is Christian.

Old English took 'shrive', the verb whose past tense names Shrove Tuesday, from a Latin word meaning what?

To write, Latin scribo, is the root: a priest 'prescribed' penance, so scrifan came to mean hearing confession, and its past tense shrove stuck to the Tuesday when the faithful were shriven before Lent.

Crempogau, thick buttermilk pancakes stacked and buttered, are a Shrove Tuesday tradition in which part of the UK?

Wales piles up crempogau, made with buttermilk on a bakestone, for Shrove Tuesday and for birthdays, when the buttered stack is cut into wedges and served like a cake.

Which poet's 1930 'conversion poem', written after joining the Church of England, is titled Ash Wednesday?

T. S. Eliot wrote it after his 1927 conversion to Anglicanism, building on Dante's Purgatorio; its opening line reworks the start of an exile's ballad by the medieval Italian poet Cavalcanti.

Atherstone's Shrovetide ball game is said to recall a 1199 match for a bag of gold in which monarch's reign?

King John was on the throne, the story goes, when Warwickshire beat Leicestershire in the 'Match of Gold'; today's game runs along Long Street until a 5 pm whistle, and its best-known rule is that nobody may be killed.

In 2017 Father Paddy Mooney of Glenamaddy, Ireland, offered Ash Wednesday ashes to commuters in what novel way?

Drive-through ashes let commuters receive them without leaving the car, and the parish added a box for drive-by prayer requests through Lent; clergy have been taking ashes out to public places since 2007.

Which Kansas town has raced Olney for the fastest pancake time on Shrove Tuesday since 1950?

Liberal's Jaycees issued the challenge in 1950 after seeing a magazine picture of the Olney women racing to church, and the two towns have compared their times across the ocean ever since.

Olney's pancake-race rules require each runner to toss the pancake at which points?

At the start and the finish the pancake must be tossed, and runners wear an apron and headscarf, echoing the 1445 housewife said to have run to church with her frying pan still in hand.

Collop Monday, the old English name for the day before Shrove Tuesday, takes its name from a dish of eggs and what?

Slices of bacon, the collops, were fried with eggs to use up the larder's last rashers before Lent; in east Cornwall the same day was Peasen Monday, for its pea soup.

Vastlapäev, marked with pea soup and whipped-cream buns, is Shrove Tuesday in which country?

Estonia's vastlakukkel is a cardamom bun with whipped cream, close to the Swedish semla; the older Shrove fare is pea or bean soup cooked with pig's trotters, a last rich meal before the Lenten fast.

What is hidden inside a New Orleans Mardi Gras king cake, by tradition leaving its finder to buy the next one?

A plastic baby, standing for the infant Jesus the three kings visited, hides in the cakes sold from 6 January until Mardi Gras, the city's Shrove Tuesday; its finder brings the next cake or throws the next party.

Which formula from Mark 1:15 did the 1969 Roman Rite revision add for imposing ashes?

Repent, and believe in the Gospel was given first place in 1969, ahead of the older 'Remember that you are dust', which echoes God's words to Adam after the Fall; either may be said as the ashes are given.

Quinquagesima, the old name for the Sunday that opens Shrovetide, is Latin for which ordinal number?

Fiftieth counts the days to Easter inclusively, Sunday to Sunday, and its sisters Sexagesima and Septuagesima, sixtieth and seventieth, named the two Sundays before it in the pre-1970 calendar.

Reforms after which council removed the three pre-Lent '-gesima' Sundays from the Roman calendar?

Vatican II's liturgical reforms folded those Sundays into Ordinary Time, so the Sunday before Shrove Tuesday is now simply the fourth to ninth Sunday of the year, depending on Easter's date.

Nickanan Night, the Cornish Shrove Monday, licensed local youths to do what after dusk?

Knock on doors and run off was the game, a 'nicky nicky nine doors' that may have given the night its name, along with carrying off any gear left lying about; the west of Cornwall called it roguery night.

Iceland's Shrove Tuesday is Sprengidagur, 'Bursting Day', when people fill up on split peas and what?

Salted meat and peas is the Bursting Day dinner, eaten until you can hold no more on the last day before the fast; cream buns come the day before and the children's costumed pranks the day after.

In Ivrea, Italy, the three days up to Shrove Tuesday bring a mass street battle fought with which fruit?

Oranges fly as throwers on foot, cast as the townsfolk, pelt cart crews cast as a tyrant's troops; legend has the revolt begin when a miller's daughter beheaded him, and a red cap marks bystanders as off limits.

At Lithuania's Užgavėnės, what happens to Morė, the effigy of winter, on the night before Ash Wednesday?

It is burned, and a staged fight follows in which Lašininis, 'Porky', standing for winter, loses to Kanapinis, the hempen man of spring; devils, witches and goats roam the villages in masks.

Which enclave of Detroit, lined with Polish bakeries, stages a Pączki Day parade every Shrove Tuesday?

Hamtramck's parade and bar parties mark Tłusty Wtorek, Fat Tuesday, because Polish Americans moved the pączki feast from Poland's Fat Thursday to the day before Lent; eating contests have followed.

Which North Yorkshire resort closes its foreshore every Shrove Tuesday so that everyone can skip with long ropes?

Scarborough's Skipping Day once used ropes from the harbour, and the town crier rang a pancake bell to start it; schools close early and a replica bell has hung in the town since 1996.

At Westminster School's Greaze, pupils scramble for a pancake tossed over a 20-foot bar; what is it reinforced with?

Horsehair holds the pancake together through a one-minute scrum; the pupil who ends up with the heaviest piece wins a gold sovereign and the Dean of Westminster begs a half-holiday for the school. The custom is recorded from 1753.

The Parliamentary Pancake Race, held each Shrove Tuesday, pits MPs and peers against which third team?

Journalists, the Fourth Estate, make up the third team, racing MPs and peers for the title of Parliamentary Pancake Race Champions; the race is run to raise awareness for the charity Rehab.

How is a goal scored in Ashbourne's two-day Shrovetide football game?

Tap it against a millstone three times in succession and the ball is 'goaled'; the scorer is chosen on the way, almost always a local, and the two goals stand three miles apart on Henmore Brook.

Which Russian festival fills the last week before Orthodox Lent with stacks of buttery blini?

Maslenitsa, or Butter Week, ends on Forgiveness Sunday, when friends and relatives ask each other's pardon; it is the last day dairy may be eaten before Easter, hence a week of pancakes.

Most of England's Shrovetide mob football games died out after which 1835 law?

The Highway Act 1835 outlawed football on the highway, so the mob games mostly died out in the 19th century; Atherstone simply carried on, and its 2021 Covid cancellation was the first in the game's 821-year history.

In 2012 Brad Jolly set a Guinness record in Sydney by tossing a pancake how many times in one minute?

140 flips in 60 seconds is more than two a second, a feat Guinness was still calling unbeaten two years later; the highest single toss on record reached 9.47 metres in New York state in 2010.

On Weiberfastnacht, the Rhineland's women's carnival Thursday before Ash Wednesday, what do women snip off the men?

Their ties, a symbol of male status, are cut off and the men get a Bützchen, a peck on the cheek, in return; the day is said to have begun in Bonn's Beuel, where washerwomen formed their own carnival committee in 1824.

Which pope's 1091 Council of Benevento prescribed ashes at the start of Lent for clergy and laity alike?

Urban II, who four years later preached the First Crusade, held the council in 1091; by then ashes for all the faithful were already customary in much of Western Europe.

Catholic canon law requires fasting on just two days a year, Ash Wednesday and which other?

Good Friday is the other: Paul VI's 1966 constitution Paenitemini reorganised the Church's penance and kept the fast, one full meal a day, for just these two days, a rule canon 1251 still carries.

Ash Wednesday will fall in 2096 on which date for the first time since the Gregorian calendar began in 1582?

29 February has never yet hosted Ash Wednesday in the Gregorian era, and after 2096 only 2468, 2688, 2840 and 2992 follow this millennium; Valentine's Day, by contrast, got it in both 2018 and 2024.

Which English abbot's account from about the year 1000 shows ashes being 'strewn' on the head at the start of Lent?

Ælfric of Eynsham wrote of ashes strewn on the head, not the forehead cross that prevails now in English-speaking churches, and he did so nearly a century before the 1091 Council of Benevento.

In Alemannic dialect, the 'schmotzig' of Schmotziger Donnerstag, the Thursday before Ash Wednesday, means what?

Lard, or fat, is what Schmotz means there, so the day is 'Greasy Thursday', given over to rich, fatty food before the fast; standard German schmutzig, 'dirty', is a false friend.

Which Prayer Book service, a recital of God's judgments on sinners, replaced the ashes in the Church of England?

The Commination, or Denouncing of God's Anger and Judgments against Sinners, came in with the first Prayer Book of the mid-16th century and laments that the old public penance at the start of Lent had lapsed.

The ashes for Ash Wednesday are traditionally made by burning what from the previous year?

Palm Sunday branches, blessed the spring before, are burned for the ashes, so the palms that greeted Jesus's entry into Jerusalem come back the next year as a reminder of mortality.

Alnwick's Shrovetide match ends with the ball sent into the River Aln; who keeps it?

Whoever swims over to fetch it keeps the ball, the last act of Scoring the Hales, a match between the parishes of St Michael and St Paul that the Duke of Northumberland traditionally starts by throwing the ball from Alnwick Castle.

In parts of Maryland, the fasnacht doughnuts fried for Shrove Tuesday go by what local name?

Kinklings is the name heard around Frederick, Maryland, for the fasnacht, a doughnut fried to use up the fat and sugar before Lent and sold there in bakeries only on Shrove Tuesday.

In Hawaii, Shrove Tuesday is named after which sugar-coated doughnut made famous by Leonard's Bakery in Honolulu?

Malasada Day goes back to the sugar plantations, where Portuguese workers from Madeira and the Azores fried up their fat and sugar before Lent; Leonard's began selling them soon after opening in 1952, at the urging of the founder's mother.