Switching it up from its popular Pancake Tuesday event, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church will celebrate at their Mardi Gras fundraiser on Tuesday, featuring Cajun food, traditional Zydeco music. The event will support Schmitt Elementary School students and the school’s Personal Item Pantry.
“They are our neighbor and we have taken on the much loved responsibility of providing personal items, even coats and backpacks, for children at Schmitt who need them. Particularly this winter lots of coats have gone through our Personal Item Pantry and it means under a secure entry, a teacher, a counselor, perhaps parents and children, can come into our lower level and get what they need,” senior warden Nancy Morris said. “So this is a fundraiser to continue and add to that process.”
The fundraiser will be held from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. Tickets cost $15 for adults while children and students can attend for free. Tickets may be purchased at the door.
According to priest Aelred Dean, Mardi Gras, also called Fat Tuesday or Shrove Tuesday, takes place before the season of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. As Lent is a time of fasting, prayer and reflection to prepare for baptism and Easter, Mardi Gras is a time to celebrate and eat any tempting food before Lent begins, he said.
“… if you want to use a modern analogy, if you didn’t have potato chips in your house, most likely you wouldn’t eat them,” Dean said. ”So on Fat Tuesday, they would get rid of all that tempting food, eat it up and share it with friends so they could observe a Lent that was faithful to the discipline of the season.”
Zydeco and carnivale music will play in the decorated parish hall during the event, Dean said. The celebration will include Cajan food such as gumbo, jambalaya, red beans and rice, in addition to a king cake.
“It’s a cake where there’s a little, well you wouldn’t be able to swallow it, plastic baby of Jesus and it’s put in the cake and you cut it up and whoever gets the piece of cake with baby Jesus in it wins a surprise and that’s part of the tradition,” Dean said.
St. Paul’s has held Mardi Gras events in the past, but those took place prior to the pandemic, she said. The church traditionally holds a pancake supper, another tradition in the Christian faith before Ash Wednesday, but this year just for fun, she said they decided to bring back a Mardi Gras celebration.
“Our Pancake Tuesdays were great, but I think since we have a very inclusive priest and all are welcome, I just think that we wanted to make it more about the fun and the celebratory nature of Mardi Gras as opposed to just serving pancakes and maple syrup, which in itself is fine but this is a lot more fun,” Morris said.
