Butter Festival

Perhaps the closest rival to the Easter feast is found in the gorging that precedes the great Lenten fast. This revelry is known as the Butter Festival, and since it offers the last chance to eat dairy products for a long six weeks, the Russians make the most of it. Maslenitsa (from the word maslo, “butter”) is a carnival time akin to the Western Mardi Gras. Young people used to build ice hills and send burning effigies of winter crashing down their slopes; they constructed large bonfires (fire signified the pagan worship of the sun); they hired troikas for gay rides in the country.