Henry Raymond
Fairfax News => Current News & Events => Topic started by: Henry on February 21, 2007, 09:47:30 AM
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Well, it was always a long standing tradition in our family that we always knew what we would have on Ash Wednesday – The story was that one must eat pancakes on Ash Wednesday, otherwise you would catch the 7 year itch. Now I don’t know what the seven year itch is, nor have I ever seen anyone with it, but that’s probably because those people I knew carried on the tradition of eating pancakes and maple syrup on Ash Wednesday. The link below has another reason for eating pancakes, not on Ash Wednesday, but the night before:
http://homepages.tesco.net/~derek.berger/holidays/pancakeday.html
Now after all these years, now that we have Internet, I Googled for the 7 year itch and here is what I found – Appears it is not a disease and certainly don’t think my mother had any idea that this is what eating pancakes was what she was protecting us kids from:
“if someone who is married gets the seven year itch, they become bored with their relationship after about seven years and often want to start a sexual relationship with another person. He keeps talking about all the women he knew before we were married - I think he's got the seven-year itch”
Bottom line, I believe Mother knew we couldn’t eat meat on Ash Wednesday, Fish we only ate from cans, which was usually canned salmon since we didn’t have a refrigerator. Mother used to make a milk gravy with it (It also made one can go farther) and I don’t ever remember eating canned Tuna at home. We had our own hens for eggs, so they were popular, so our Fridays and Ash Wednesday, it was usually eggs and sometimes Fried Bread Dough.
Oh Well, so much for the seven year itch, I like pancakes anyhow and it’s a good reason to eat them.
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For those of you who have never heard of The Seven Year Itch and the tradition of eating pancakes on Ash Wednesday.