Locals enjoy pancakes and fellowship

Each year Sisters Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration brings an age-old international custom to the community. Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday the beginning of Lent. is celebrated with a traditional pancake dinner.

Local folks assemble for good food and conversation and a reminder that the time for introspection is drawing near.

"It's a traditional Episcopal or Anglican event that dates way back into the middle ages," said Church of the Transfiguration rector Reverend Ted Rodrigues. "The Shrove Tuesday pancake supper is one of those things that people kind of look forward to because of its long, long tradition."

According to Reverend Rodrigues, as many non-parishioners attend the event as do church members.

"Every year I notice that there are people who are not church members who plan to come just for this event. The joy comes out of sharing breakfast or dinner, sort of a rare treat, and to be served and just to hear the conversations and to meet new people," he said. The event is a special treat because in large communities people regularly go out in the evening for breakfast, but in Sisters finding breakfast at night is not commonplace," he said.

Having a pancake supper the evening before the start of Lent is a means of using up rich foods, like butter, eggs, milk and sugar that are avoided during the 40 Lenten days of liturgical fasting. During Lent only the plainest of foodstuffs are eaten.

"The pancake supper is kind of a pig out and eat all of the fat stuff you can, because this is it for 40 days," said Gayla Nelson, pancake dinner co-chairman.

Each year the Transfiguration Women's Guild organizes the pancake supper. According to this year's chairman Dixie Fairfield, Shrove Tuesday celebrations are common at Episcopal churches throughout the country.

"I've always been to a Shrove Tuesday since I was a child," she said. "In England they would call it Pancake Tuesday, and they would have pancake races (where contestants must run carrying skillets and tossing their pancakes at the start of the race)."

The guild's purpose in hosting the supper is to bring the community together for an evening of good fellowship and fun; the goal is not to make money.

"Whatever we get from this goes into the ladies guild. We use it to buy more plates or things like that, or they give outreach like this: last year the women's guild gave $1,000 to Bethlehem Inn (in Bend)," said Fairfield.

Shrove is the term used for the pre-Lent celebration in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and Episcopal and Lutheran churches in the United States. In Catholic and French-speaking areas festivities the day before the start of Lent are known as Mardi Gras (the French for Fat Tuesday). In Germany, the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday is called Fastnacht Day.