Mardi Gras, also known as Carnival, Shrove Tuesday, Pancake Day.
Mardi Gras is both an end and a beginning. It is the end of the season which started after King's Day, or Epiphany, on the 6th of January, when Christ is said to have revealed himself as God the Son in human form. In France they eat a galette des rois or King's cake on this day, and in fact through the whole of January, if bakeries have their way.
And, just to digress a little, as is my wont, when I lived in France many years ago, and went to the hairdresser to try and French myself up a little bit, you know, achieve that certain je ne sais quoi level of sophistication which my 22 year old rabbit-in-the-headlights look did not encourage, there was a heated discussion about the actual galette des rois between two other clients.
There are two recipes, you see, one is a brioche ring, or crown if you will, with glacé fruit 'jewels' on top, the other is a flaky pastry frangipane tart. But both have a fève, which used to be a dried bean and is now some sort of teeth-breaking porcelain charm that, should you be the one to break your teeth on it, means you get to be the King. And wear a gold paper crown. Very exciting, I can tell you. More exciting was the fact that this discussion about the two cakes went on for the full hour and a half that I was getting my hair cut by the hairdresser who periodically would disappear behind the curtain, reappear, cut some more hair, and disappear again. Later, when revealing the source of my not very sophisticated haircut, I was told that he was in fact the town drunk, and even later, by another hairdresser, that this was not a haircut, but a massacre. I had even taken a little photo of Juliette Binoche from the film Bleu along with me as a visual explanation of what I required. To no avail.
This has nothing to do with Fat Tuesday. Except that King's day is the start of a celebratory season of cakes with bits in them, parties, costumes and parades. And that all comes to a screeching holt tomorrow, post Fat Tuesday on Ash Wednesday.
So Fat Tuesday is all about eating EVERYTHING in the cupboard. Go on, you know you've been looking forward to eating that tin of condensed milk all by yourself, washing it down with the maple syrup and generally ridding the house of the fatty, rich food you will deprive yourself of over the Lenten Period which leads up to Easter.
Pancakes seem to have become the epitome of all that is Fat Tuesday as they use up milk, eggs, butter and any kind of fancy jam or nutella you may have lying around which would tempt you over those 40 long days and nights of fasting.
So. I have eaten a pancake. Which I suppose means that I will have to give up something over the next 40 days.
It's sad that that in enjoying the full richness of an experience, there has to be a giving up involved. So we can celebrate the joy of an epiphany, but only for so long. Ecstasy and golden light and then ash and sack cloth and deprivation.
Take hold lightly, let go lightly. Holding on too tightly to the seasons and the ebb and flow of life and expecting too much from them is not realistic. Nor does it fit the calendar.
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