My Mennonite family back in Pennsylvania and the entire PA Dutch community celebrate today with the eating of doughnuts called "fastnachts". I was lead to believe this tradition started back in the old country (Germany), so Gianna and I set out to conduct a survey of German bakeries in Frankfurt to see if anyone was selling something called a "fastnacht" or any type of special doughnut made only for the day before Lent. We also checked out the local churches to see what they were doing to celebrate the start of Lent.German bakeries are normally heavy pushers of kreppels (doughnuts), but I have noticed in the past week, some bakeries are making more kreppels than other pastries. Dan said he saw someone carrying half dozen boxes of extra-large kreppels this morning, which was out of the ordinary. So maybe there is a solid German tradition of eating kreppels on the day before Lent.
Gianna and I visited four bakeries where everything was business as usual before we found this guy with a little stand out front hawking kreppels to the people passing by. We bought two, one apfel (left) and one pflaumen (center). Gianna and I ate the apfel kreppel as we resumed our bakery/church walk-about and saved the pflaumen for Bố.
We visited half a dozen other bakeries where nothing was out of the ordinary. None the pastries were called "fastnachts" and the kreppels weren't any different than the kreppels sold at other times. Maybe there were more varieties and maybe people were buying more of them, but I don't have enough data points from other times of the year to back that up ;-) My conclusion? In this part of Germany, kreppels seem to be more popular the day before Lent, however they are not called fastnachts like in Southeastern PA and they are the same old kreppels sold at other times of the year. Perhaps in other parts of Germany or Switzerland, you may find something called fastnachts, but not here.I guess we were one day early for church, as nothing special was happening there either. Some churches are having pancake suppers tonight, another Shrove Tuesday tradition. Here are some shots of our somewhat irreverent visit to St. Bartholomäus.
Shrove Tuesday is known as Pancake Day here in Canada. The idea being to use up the fat that won't keep through lent.
ReplyDeleteNot sure if this will be a possibility or not there, but here in Jordan, we have many Catholic and Orthodox churches. The Orthodox calendar is different that the Western Calendar, and so Easter falls on a different day. Easter here in Jordan this year is actually one week after it in the States (some years it's a month apart). Perhaps that is the answer...check back in a week :)
ReplyDeleteSo, I asked a German friend here about Fastnachts. It actually took a while for her to realize what I was asking. Then she said that those who don't know what Fastnachts are are people who are not catholic. And Frankfurht is primarily a non-Catholic area...
ReplyDeleteI had fun sharing some of your discoveries with her :)