What: National Pancake Day with Brilliantly British
Where: Copley 2 Common Room
When: Tuesday March 4, 8pm – 10pm
This Tuesday, Brilliantly British is hosting its first annual Pancake Day event. This event pays tribute to the nationally recognized holiday in England, Pancake Day, which is celebrated every year on Shrove Tuesday. From 8pm – 10pm in the Copley 2 common room, expect to find batches on batches of pancakes filled with Nutella, jam, and lemon and sugar.
Brilliantly British intends to be a home away from home for students from the UK. Beatrice Fabris (COL ’16) and Patrick Lim (SFS ’16) decided to create this community when they realized that British culture was highly underrepresented on campus. “There is a common misconception that the UK and the US share many of the same traditions – but that is not true,” said Fabris. The UK has its own unique culture, and through events like National Pancake Day, Brilliantly British hopes to educate the student body and celebrate those differences.
For instance, UK food culture is quite different from that in America. Most notably, the English tend to prefer specific meals rather than specific foods. The most popular meals are fish and chips and Sunday roast dinners. Sunday roast is a family and friends oriented tradition where you can find roast potatoes accompanied by a joint of meat such as beef, lamb, pork or chicken. There is also always an assortment of sides, ranging from gravy to mint jelly.
“We obviously love our tea too,” says Lim, apparent by the fact that tea is a staple at many Brilliantly British events. Many visitors from overseas imagine that in England, “at half past three, everything stops for tea.” Sadly, that is not the case, but Fabris and Lim speak from experience when they say that in the UK, “people definitely love their tea.” Another popular activity in England is to grab a pint at a pub with some friends in the afternoon or evening. With a drinking age of 21 in the US, they remarked that many British students miss that activity.
National Pancake Day is one of England’s more gluttonous holidays, where you can expect to see people eating pancakes all day. The history of Pancake Day began when people started making pancakes as a way to use up any stocks of milk, butter and eggs, all of which were forbidden during the abstinence of Lent. Today, the day is an excuse to eat lots of pancakes all day, and as you can imagine, the British love this holiday. In other parts of the world, Shrove Tuesday is celebrated differently. For instance, in New Orleans it is celebrated with the Mardi Gras carnival. “Everyone is invited to come and cook and eat with us,” says Fabris. “Who doesn’t like pancakes?”
Brilliantly British is not a community exclusively for people from England. Right now there are approximately 200 students involved in Brilliantly British and only 15% of them are actually British, so anyone is welcome and encouraged to join.
Brilliantly British usually has two events a month and they are always both educational and fun. On Saturday, this club checked out the Phillips collection and then went to ShopHouse for a free lunch. To learn more about how to get involved with Brilliantly British, you can easily sign up for their mailing list to receive weekly emails about upcoming events.