Pancakes Please

Since today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, yesterday was Shrove Tuesday, sometimes better known as Fat Tuesday. The latter name reflects the effort of soon-to-be Lenten fasters to cram into one day all the eating and fun that will be ecclesiastically frowned upon during the encroaching forty days and nights of Lent. Some communities, such as New Orleans and Venice, even stretch this magical day into a week-long mardi gras festival. Here, in my little corner of eastern Oregon, amid the wheat fields, foothills, and pea patches, however, we keep things simpler.

Tonight, our parish is hosting a Shrove Tuesday Pancake Dinner, replete with ham, pancakes, applesauce, and scrambled eggs. No masks, dancing, or debauchery here, just plain, down-home, clean-out-the-fridge type cooking with a side of ask-the-neighbors-over and visit-across-the-table hospitality. Much of the town filters in from work to plunk down a few dollars and fill up on the simple fare, the hall reverberating with chatter.

Frankly, I wonder every year why people come when it would seem easier to go home and flip their own flapjacks for free. But they keep coming anyway, people from other churches or no church at all, to support this little Catholic shindig. I suppose it is cheap enough that even large families can afford to give Mom a night off and basic enough that even the pickiest eaters will be content. And, too, it is a quick and easy outing for a school night.

I have also wondered why we put this dinner on, especially since there are so few of us to do the work. Who else, besides us, cares that Lent is approaching? Or is it to help pay our bills? The Octoberfest Dinner that we host in the fall is a larger money-maker, but maybe it isn’t enough.

Dorothy says that we host this dinner for the same reason that people come:  community. Our working together toward a common goal builds a sense of family among the people at church, and people come in order to acknowledge and support our place within the larger community of our town. She says we all NEED this dinner and I believe she’s right. It really isn’t about pancakes at all.