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I know that, originally, pancakes were cooked to use up the eggs and fat before Lent, before a time of self-denial - but I must confess I never really thought of the reason while enjoying them. They were just the food to look forward to on that day, the food became important, not the reason. It's amazing how that has become true for other spiritual truths - the tradition somehow becomes the most important thing and obscures the reason behind it. We only have to look at the way Christmas and Easter are treated in the secular world to realise it happens. The Christmas cards with robins, snowy scenes or questionable cartoons do nothing to refl ect the wonder of our Lord's birth. The Easter bunnies and chocolate eggs have little to do with the amazing sacrifice the season commemorates and should be proclaiming. I know that Christians try to emphasise the Christian message at such times but it gets harder every year to fi nd suitable cards - maybe we should all make our own! The only thing we CAN do is to continue to proclaim the Good News loudly and clearly without room for confusion. Lets not allow the 'tradition' to obscure the foundation. I'm very glad that so far, the commercial world has not decided to help us celebrate Pentecost. Maybe we should be making cards to send to each other "Happy Birthday Church" Sue Whitehead.
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This
year, for the first time in my life, I did not have a pancake on Shrove
Tuesday. We were in USA at the time and, apparently, it is not an
American tradition. Because I couldn't have them, I thought about
them a lot - the tradition became the focus, not the reason behind
them.
