Pancakes

When is Pancake Day this year? It's one of the teddy bears' favourite days in the calendar (I wonder why?) but it seems to change every year, doesn't it? That's because Pancake Day always arrives 47 days before Easter, and Easter changes every year too.

Easter Sunday is calculated as the first Sunday after the full Moon that occurs on or after the Vernal Equinox - haven't we mentioned that special time before? - click here to find out what we already know about it. If the full Moon falls on a Sunday, then Easter Sunday is the next Sunday.

This year Pancake Day (or Shrove Tuesday as it is more correctly named) is on the first of March.

But why do we eat Pancakes on Pancake Day?

Well, Shrove Tuesday immediately precedes Ash Wednesday, which in turn heralds the start of Lent, the Christian season supposed to replicate the Biblical story of Jesus Christ's withdrawal into the desert for 40 days and nights.

This is why Lent is traditionally a period of abstinence (which means a time when something is given up) and many people nowadays, including non-Christians, still get into the spirit of this season by giving up a particular treat.

The teddy bears often give up chocolate, but only for 40 days, mind!!

In the olden days, with the awful prospect of 40 days of abstinence looming, it was perhaps a sensible approach to eat as much as possible just beforehand. Lent was much more strictly observed and was a time to eat much simpler food, and give up things like sweet, rich and dairy ingredients.

This meant that the day before the season was an ideal time to make pancakes to use up all the leftover eggs, milk and sugar, which are what our pancakes are made out of today.

In France and other parts of the world, Pancake Day is known as 'Mardi Gras' which means 'Fat Tuesday'.

There are other celebrations on Pancake Day and one of them is Pancake races, which supposedly started way back in 1445 (a very, very, very long time ago!).

According to legend, a woman in Buckinghamshire is said to have been caught out by the sound of the church bells ringing for service before she had finished making her pancake.

Her solution, the story goes, was to run from her home to her local church service still carrying her frying pan, flipping the pancake in it to prevent it burning in the still-hot pan.

This was in a town called Olney, which still holds a world-famous annual race on Pancake Day where contestants run a 415-yard course, traditionally wearing an apron in honour of the Pancake Race's founder!!

The teddy bears thought it would be fun to have a Pancake Race this year too. But they couldn't run quite that far so instead they ran the length of the garden.

And hot pans, especially containing hot pancake mixture, and teddy bears don't mix too well, so they changed them to cold pans and round cut-out pieces of cardboard. Perhaps it would be fun for you to try your own Pancake Races too!