Fat Tuesday-2022

by Cindi Sutter, Founder & Editor Spirited Table®

This year, Fat Tuesday is March 1st!

Given that Lent was a season of fasting, it makes sense that households would traditionally consume all remaining foods that would be forbidden during Lent, such as meat, eggs, and dairy products, as Ash Wednesday approached. Hence, Shrove Tuesday was also called Fat Tuesday, or Mardi Gras.

What to Know

The name "Fat Tuesday" refers to the practice of consuming all of the food forbidden while fasting during Lent, which begins on Ash Wednesday. Meat is traditionally abstained from during Lent which is where the word "carnival" is originally derived from, meaning "the removal of meat."

Mardi Gras is French for “Fat Tuesday.” It’s best known as the New Orleans celebration of carnival that leads up to Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, the season of fasting and penitence during the 40 weekdays before Easter in the Catholic calendar. Since it’s a holy season, devout people were supposed to go to confession, which led to calling the day Shrove Tuesday in Medieval England: shrove is from shrive, an archaic verb meaning “to confess one’s sins especially to a priest.”

Fat Tuesday Tips from Spirited tables of the past.