Maslenitsa (Cheesefare Week) · Maslenitsa

Culture of origin: Christian · Cultural

Holiday sources: Eastern Orthodox

Maslenitsa, also Butter Week or Cheesefare Week, is an East Slavic religious and folk festival, kept mainly in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, in the last week before Great Lent, the eighth before Pascha. People make blini in Russia, and pierogi and syrniki in Ukraine and Belarus, pay visits, take sleigh rides and have snowball fights, and burn a straw effigy of "Lady Maslenitsa". It ends on Forgiveness Sunday.