MILFORD - The Church of Our Saviour will close out the church season of Epiphany with a Mardi Gras celebration featuring a traditional pancake supper on Tuesday, Feb. 12 between 6-8 p.m.

The event will also feature the selection and crowning of a Mardi Gras king and queen, and the second annual running of the church's popular pancake race.

In the race, participants will make their way through the lower level of the church carrying a pancake in a frying pan. All runners must toss their pancakes as they run and catch them in the pan.

Traditionally pancakes are served on Shrove Tuesday (or Fat Tuesday as it has come to be known) so that the last of a household's fatty and rich foods could be used up before the season of Lent.

Pancake races are said to have originated in the 1400s in Olney, England, when a housewife, still busy frying pancakes to eat before the Lenten fast, heard the church bells calling her to the Shrove Tuesday service.

Eager to get to church, she ran out of her house still holding the frying pan complete with pancake, still wearing her apron and headscarf.

The church's lower level undercroft, accessible via the Amherst Street entrance, will be transformed for the occasion with decorations and music.

Mardi Gras beads and supplies will be on hand if people want to make a festive mask. Come in costume if you want.

The supper, race and festivities are free and open to the public.

A free-will offering will be accepted to help offset costs and to benefit SHARE Outreach.

The church is located at 10 Amherst St., just outside of the Milford Oval, across from the post office. For more information, call 673-3309, email at office@coosmilford.org , or go online to www.coosmilford.org