Open-air celebration “Butter Week Carnival”
Slavs celebrated “Winter seeing-off and Spring welcoming” holiday, devoted to Volos or Veles, the pagan deity of fertility and cattle-breeding. In old Russia after adopting Christianity this holiday maintained, and since 16th c. it has been called Shrove-tide. Since pagan and Christian traditions have been deeply intertwined, forming a single whole, Shrove-tide forestalls the Lent that ends on Blessed Christ's Easter. Usually people celebrate Shrove-tide since the end of February till the beginning of March.
Butter week is the beginning of spring, nature renewal. It forestalls the beginning of spring works in a field. That’s why some rites were connected with the celebration in honour of newly-weds and accompanied by merry jokes. A young family was considered as one with a special energy that can be transmitted by young couples to the ground. So, newly-weds had to toboggan that symbolized the energy transmitting to the ground. Thus, the frozen ground can easier be saved from the cold and in the fall do fairly well. But tobogganing is fun not only for the newly-married couples but for everybody. It usually was accompanied by songs, sung mainly by girls, waiting for tobogganing. That day people raced in carriages-and-three with songs, accordions, jokes, kisses and hugs. In Old Russia people loved Shrove-Tide, the merry, unruly and reckless holiday!
According to well-known legends, the pagan deity Veles was also connected with the Lower World, or Navyu, the abode of the ancestors’ spirits. As Butter Week is considered as a border-holiday on this holiday, like on all other such holidays, the confines between Navyu and Javyu (the world of the quick) become shaky. And thus, a part of rites were devoted to preventing the irreparable harm from Navi to the world of the quick. And only respectable attitude to dead ancestors and merry celebration of Butter Week were considered to manage it.
Butter Week, forestalling the Lent, is the last day for having plentiful meal. The food eaten on Butter Week was considered as ritual one and thus, our ancestors were not sparing of treat that day: they believed the eaten food is a sacrifice to next harvest. To present day celebrating Shrove-tide people show hopes for a bumper-crop year. That’s why this holiday has always been plentiful and abundant.
The central figure of the holiday was the Butter Week straw effigy, dressed up in a sash girded caftan, a hat, and bast shoes on its feet. People usually seated it in a sleigh and drew it uphill, singing songs: thus, they welcomed Shrove-tide. Dressed up young people accompanied the Butter Week straw effigy. Most often people arrayed themselves as Gypsies. The celebration ends up with ritual Butter Week straw effigy faggoting. The ashes of the effigy were scattered across the field to strengthen the next harvest.
That day, on the threshold of the Lent people apologize to each other to clear off sins. For the same purpose they come to cemeteries on Shrove Sunday and leave pan-cakes on graves. Pan-cakes, traditionally circle-shaped baked, symbolize the beginning of the new life period as well as the junction for the Eternal. And today, celebrating this holiday, we pay tribute to our ancestries and the cheerful culture of Old Russia.
In the programme:
To mind:
There are temporary traffic restrictions during the celebrations
• Welcoming Shrove-tide
• Shrove-tide rites
• «Comic booth» – Punch’s show
• Making small Butter Week effigies
• Folk games, contests, competitions and fun, horse riding and sleighing
• Folklore theatres and groups performances
• Snow painting
• Ice-skating
• Trade market and treat stalls
• Burning Butter Week straw effigy
Location: Sophiyskaya Square, the Kremlin, the Kremlin Park, the city beach, Sophiyskaya Embankment