2022.03.02

From Spring Festival to Waffle Day

Ahead of the upcoming Waffle Day, APPLiAnytt has looked back in time to get the history of the long-awaited holiday and how Vårfrudag became Waffle Day. 

 

Virgin Mary's Day, also known as Waffle Day, is celebrated on March 25, exactly nine months before Christmas Day, when Jesus is said to have been born.

In Christian countries, the feast of the Annunciation has been celebrated since the 7th century, and according to the Gospels, on this day the archangel Gabriel descended from heaven and told the Virgin Mary that she was pregnant. The day is called the Annunciation of Mary and is thus celebrated in memory of a great mystery – the virgin birth.

In the farming community, Spring Day marked the beginning of spring farming, when winter turned into spring, and children ran barefoot to promote the harvest – and harden their feet so they wouldn't get cracks during the summer...

Over time, the Day of the Virgin Mary has – through careless pronunciation or a longing for edible treats, or both – linguistically changed to become Waffle Day. And there is a religious connection (more than the linguistic transformation) in that the first waffle irons were a further development of the wafer irons, which were used to make wafers for communion. The first waffles that were baked were baked in monasteries.

Waffles have been known in Sweden since the 17th century (according to the Swedish Academy's Dictionary since 1642) and the word is likely inherited from the Dutch "wafel" (similar to the German "Waffel" and the English "waffle") which originates from the medieval "wafele" from the 13th century - and even before that, the French word "walfre" can be found around 1185 (according to Wikipedia).

Ola Larsson