What the F*ck is Maslenitsa?
Maslenitsa (Ma-sla-nee-tsa) – Russia’s finest winter time event. A week full of non-stop eating, face punching, bears performing weird acts, sledding in the snow and burning shit up! Maslentisa is more commonly known as butter week, or pancake week, so lets start with the food…everyone loves pancakes. Everyone loves crepes. Now imagine if you can perfectly combine the two to make a pancake-like crepe. The Russians created this food miracle, called it “blini” and devour them all throughout Maslenitsa. For serious! To be completely sure that the information you read here fully covers this bonanza, we teamed up with our Russian correspondent, Ekaterina Dmitrienko, to get the inside scoop…
Food
Maslenitsa celebrates the end of winter and the coming of sunny spring and happens the seventh week before Pascha (Easter) every year. Since blini are round and golden like the sun, they make the perfect celebratory food. Festival goers splurge by stuffing their faces with blini, caviar, sour cream and butter. Falling on the week before The Great Lent (7 weeks of abstinence from all things fun and tasty), Maslenitsa is not for the weak-stomached. The idea here is to get as much forbidden food and entertainment into your system (40 or so meals this week are highly encouraged) so that once lent comes around, your stomach will be so abused and you will be so exhausted that staying away from milk, butter, meat and fun will be easy. As far as the fun part goes, Maslenitsa offers up some fun activities to help you shake off a bit of the food coma:
Fists Fights
.jpg "What the F*ck is Maslenitsa?")
In order to commemorate Russian military history, men beat the crap out of each other with their fists on the 4th day of Maslenitsa. The only rule is never hit a man when he’s down (which means face punches, crotch shots and wet willies are all fair game).
Bear Shows
As an old pagan symbol, the bear is believed to have magical healing powers (in addition to its mauling and killing powers). For this reason, trained bears are an integral part of the celebration. During the show, the bears imitate women putting on make-up, dance and pretend to cook blini. Isn’t that precious/vicious?
Clown Shows
“Petrushka” the clown is said to make people laugh with satirical performances throughout Maslenitsa. We’re still haunted by the Steven Spielberg’s IT but if you can tolerate clowns, these performances are very unique.
Visiting Relatives
The entire festival is characterized by re-connecting with your family and friends. People often walk from house to house to hang, eat and drink with family and friends. Throwing impromptu concerts and parties is highly encouraged and while chowing down on blini with everyone you know only adds to the food coma, all the walking you’ll do should melt off some of that butter.
Sled Rides
One thing we all know about Russia in February is that it’s ass-biting cold and covered in snow. During Maslenitsa, people take advantage of the snowscape by launching themselves down hills in sleds. If the endless sledding doesn’t burn off those blini calories, on the 2nd day, men are given a free pass to kiss any single girls that happen to cross their paths (kissing burns 30 calories every 15 minutes) so get to it fellas.
Burn Baby Burn!
What festival would be complete without burning something? On the last day of the festival (Sunday, the day of forgiveness), the Russians burn “Lady Maslenitsa”, a large, buttery fat, figurine usually made of straw. The Lady embodies winter and is burned as a farewell to the cold and a welcome to spring. Ekaterina says everyone bows to each other and genuinely asks for forgiveness.
Maslenitsa is interesting in that it’s both a Pagan (saying goodbye to winter) and Christian (indulgence before Lent) holiday. Since religion was repressed during socialism, this holiday was left uncelebrated for 85 years until 2002. Thus, people’s whole-hearted indulgence in this festival is partially inspired by the newer, freer, post-socialist Russia. Regardless of the reasoning behind it, all of the Maslenitsa activities should be celebrated with a blinchik (or 50) in your stomach and a shot of vodka to evoke the true Russian spirit.
Written By: Anna Starostinetskaya
**A Special Thanks to our Russian Correspondent: Ekaterina Dmitrienko
Head Writer/Editor-in-Chief of Off Track Planet. Pescatarians are not just cheating vegetarians; we're our own breed and the extra protein makes us more feisty! Rawr
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god that woman is on fire !
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This sounds pretty damn cool. I’d love to check this out. Hopefully it isn’t too boring for foreigners. I bet I could hit Oktoberfest then travel so very slowly as to be in Russia for Maslenitsa. Hmmm…