Maslenica is a unique Slavic holiday, a mix of Orthodox and pagan traditions. It lasts for a whole week and takes place during the last week before the Great Lent followed by Easter. Since Lent excludes parties, secular music, dancing and other distractions from spiritual life, Maslenica represents the last chance to take part in social activities that are not appropriate during the more prayerful, sober, and introspective Lenten season. It is a time when societal rules could be broken including wearing masks and clothing of the opposite gender, role-playing, gorging, and consuming large amounts of alcohol. In European countries there is a holiday analogous to Slavic Maslenica, the Carnival. This famous Slavic holiday is a blend of Orthodox traditions (eating before the Great Lent and preparing the body and soul for the whole month of a strict diet and rules) and the Pagan ideology of saying goodbye to and killing winter in order for spring to come. During the whole week people celebrate the coming spring and the winter dying by cooking fattening and delicious foods, such as bleeni with butter or sour cream (think of thin pancakes), sirniki (fried cottage cheese cakes), vareniki (Belorussian dumplings), pelmeni (Siberian meat dumplings), while drinking gallons of milk and eating tons of dairy products. Because of the practice of eating these foods, the Maslenica has also been known as: “bleeni eater”, “overeating week”, “voracious week”,"fatty week", “milk week”, and “cheese week”. Looking at the word “Maslenica” itself: the root of this word is “maslo”, which means butter. For every day of the Maslenica week, there were different traditions and activities to be held, each day had a very important meaning for all people: Monday: Parents sent their daughter in law back to her parents, just for one day and in the evening visited them. People started cooking bleeni (pancakes). The very first pancake had to be given to the poor, for him/her to commemorate the deceased. People also found old shoes and clothing to make a straw figures of a women symbolizing winter which were put on a big poles to be carried through the streets. Tuesday: This day was important for all families with unmarried children, it was used as a day for looking at possible future husbands. All young people would go sliding from hills, playing snowballs together and if a girl was interested in a guy, she would offer him to go to her parents’ house to eat pancakes, so the whole family could meet the young man. Wednesday: On this day, the son in law would visit his bride’s mother, who had to cook fresh pancakes for her guest. Thursday: Starting from this day any kind of activities related to work had to stop, no one was allowed to work. People had to participate in different fun activities: dancing, singing, riding horses, tobogganing, pranking neighbours and so on. The main activity was a gigantic snowball fight and building snow fortresses. The most authentic feature of Maslenica is burning big fires and jumping over them. This practice has pagan roots and served to clean the body with the fire. Also, starting from Thursday, young people could go carolling door-to-door and the owner of the houses had to give singers some money, sweets and a bit of wine. Friday: On Friday the mother in law had to go to the house of her daughter and daughter’s husband, to eat fresh and hot pancakes. With the help of such visits, parents and young couples had to show each other their good attitude and kindness. Saturday: On this day young married girls had to invite and serve husband’s sisters and other young relatives of the husband as well as all her personal unmarried female friends. Sunday: Sunday is the most important day of the Maslenica week, it is also called “Forgiven Sunday”, all relatives had to ask each other for forgiveness for all offenses that they did during the previous year. On this day, churches held special memorial services for deceased. Also people had to go to Russian baths to wash off all old dirt and leftovers of food had to be burnt and all dishes had to be washed. At the very end of the day, all people would go out and burn the straw figure of the woman, symbolizing the cold winter. The ashes of that burnt winter had to be poured over fields, as a call for good harvest. Maslenica is a unique holiday, a living proof of the ancient traditions rooted in worshipping Pagan gods, donating to the earth, and burning the dead in honour of new life. Personally, I love this holiday because I can overeat pancakes with sour cream during the whole week without anyone complaining about it : p If you are interested in Russian culture and traditions and you also like this article, please give us a thumb up on our Facebok page
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In 988 A.D. Russia was baptized by the famous count Vladimir. During those times Russia did not exist as a country, instead there were dozens of small principalities with their own leaders, their own small armies, and the territory that they lived in was known by Europeans as Slavic Rus’.
Count Vladimir was one of the most powerful counts and the most crucial for the history of Russia. He understood that as long as the country remained divided and as long as counts and principalities fought against one another, the country would remain vulnerable to outside conquerors. This is why Vladimir decided to find a motivation for people to unite. What thing could unite people with different lifestyles, incomes and occupations? Religion of course! This answer lead to one more question: which religion? Vladimir had a choice from the most powerful religions of the world: Islam, Judaism and Orthodox Christianity, he didn’t consider Catholicism because Europeans always tried to invade Russian Slavs, take their lands, and baptizing people in the enemies’ religion meant surrender. Followers of Judaism are not allowed to work on Saturday and had to eat kosher food, which was too restrictive for peasant he thought. In Islam, followers are required to pray many times a day, eat foot that is halal, and are forbidden from drinking alcohol, which also seemed to Vladimir like it would have been troublesome. Followers of Orthodox Christianity were allowed to eat and drink without restriction, what is more, there were many trade roots to the Byzantine Empire and it was really close. “Bingo!” So Orthodox Christianity was chosen. When Vladimir decided to baptize people, he did so deceptively by persuading them to step into a river. After, a priest brought from Byzantium baptised the water and all of the people in it and no one understood what had happened. At the mean time he ordered to burn and destroy totems of all pagan gods. During those times, people living in the Russian territory believed in their own gods. There was a god or a ghost for everything: sky, thunder, rain, soil, sun, trees, wind, swamps and so on. Everyone believed in pagan gods and each principality had their main pagan god. Day by day, the idea of having one God was grew to be more accepted. After a couple dozen years the masses were followers of Orthodox Christianity; despite this, the idea having many gods, ghosts, strange creatures, witches and talking beasts is still alive in the minds and folk culture of Russians. |
AuthorHi there! My name is Mila, I have been working as a local guide for six years and I've decided to share with you essential information about St. Petersburg, life in Russia and Russian culture. I hope you will enjoy! Archives
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