Shrove Tuesday is observed by many Christians, including Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists and Roman Catholics, who “make a special point of self-examination, of considering what wrongs they need to repent, and what amendments of life or areas of spiritual growth they especially need to ask God’s help in dealing with.”
Shrove Tuesday is exactly 47 days before Easter Sunday, a moveable feast based on the cycles of the moon. The date can be any between 3 February and 9 March inclusive. Shrove Tuesday in 2020 occurs on February 25.
The expression “Shrove Tuesday” comes from the word shrive, meaning “absolve”. This word began when the Latin verb scribere (meaning “to write”) found its way onto the tongues of certain Germanic peoples who brought it to Britain in the early Middle Ages. Because it was often used for laying down directions or rules in writing, 8th-century Old English speakers used their form of the term, scrifan, to mean “to prescribe or impose.” The Church adopted scrifan to refer to the act of assigning penance to sinners and, later, to hearing confession and administering absolution.
As this is the last day of the Christian liturgical season historically known as Shrovetide, before the penitential season of Lent, related popular practices, such as indulging in food that one might give up as their Lenten sacrifice for the upcoming forty days, are associated with Shrove Tuesday celebrations. The term Mardi Gras is French for “Fat Tuesday”, referring to the practice of the last night of eating richer, fatty foods before the ritual fasting of the Lenten season, which begins on Ash Wednesday. Many Christian congregations thus observe the day through the holding of pancake breakfasts, as well as the ringing of church bells to remind people to repent of their sins before the start of Lent.
“The Bruton Fount” Spring 2020 Issue from Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg, Virginia, cites the February calendar published in the 1774 Virginia Almanack with these lines:
You Friends, who late on Pancakes Far’d,
For Fasting now must be prepar’d,
‘Cause ‘tis the holy Time of Lent;
Of all your Sins you must repent,
And you will find your Time well spent.
SOURCES (accessed 02/29/2020)
Wikipedia Article on “Shrove Tuesday”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrove_Tuesday
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary Article on “shrive”
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shrive
Spring 2020 Issue of The Bruton Fount, Bruton Parish Episcopal Church, Williamsburg, Virginia. p.5
http://images.acswebnetworks.com/1/1318/BPCFOUNTSPRING2020.pdf
David Robert Lambert 