It always falls 47 days before Easter Sunday, so the date varies from year to year and falls between February 3 and March 9.
While people use the day as an excuse to just enjoy some pancakes, there is a religious reason for why it exists.
Why do we celebrate Pancake Day?
The day is used as a traditional feast day before the start of Lent on Ash Wednesday.
According to Historic UK, Lent – the 40 days leading up to Easter – was traditionally a time of fasting and on Shrove Tuesday, Anglo-Saxon Christians went to confession and were “shriven” (absolved from their sins).
In short, Shrove Tuesday was the last opportunity to use up eggs and fats before embarking on the Lenten fast and pancakes were the perfect way of using up these ingredients.
Ahead of Pancake Day, these are pancakes the way my parents made them, with the teeniest twist via Dan Lepard pic.twitter.com/eUTU0UCOZZ
— Dominic Preston (@dompreston) March 2, 2025
English Heritage adds some further detail sharing: “Before Lent could begin, all of the foods people couldn’t eat while fasting needed to be removed from the house so that they wouldn’t be tempted to break the rules. And the best way to do that was to eat these foods during Shrovetide.
“Meats like bacon would be eaten up on ‘Collop Monday’ (a collop is a thin slice of meat), two days before the start of Lent.
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“On Shrove Tuesday, eggs, butter and fat were used up – and one of the easiest ways to do this was to make pancakes or fritters.
“And they’re so delicious, people still enjoy them every February, whether they observe Christian traditions or not.”
The traditional English pancake is very thin and is served immediately after frying, usually covered in golden syrup or lemon juice and caster sugar.
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