On Monday, for Orthodox Christians, Shrovetide or cheese week has begun - the last preparatory week before the beginning of Lent. On Orthodox Easter, the celebration of Maslenitsa begins 56 days before Easter, this year it will be held from 8 to 14 March.
Two of the three preparatory weeks before Lent, including Shrovetide, are called 'continuous', since during this time the obligatory fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays is canceled. At the same time, Pancake Week, 'meat-eating' week, is distinguished by the fact that a ban has already been imposed on meat.
The concept of Shrovetide or cheese week is associated with the Easter cycle of holidays, which was formed in the Orthodox Church in the middle of the first millennium from the birth of Christ. Therefore, as noted in the Russian Orthodox Church, it is wrong to say that the Maslenitsa tradition is a pagan tradition, although in past centuries folklore and pagan ideas were really combined with Christian ones. At the same time, by the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most of the rituals had lost their ritual significance and began to be entertaining in nature, for example, the 'burning of Shrovetide'.
In the folk tradition, Maslenitsa still symbolizes the boundary between winter and spring, the last burst of well-fed, cheerful life before the start of a long and strict Great Lent. At the same time, on Wednesday and Friday this week, special lengthy services are already being held, similar to Lenten, with numerous prostrations to the ground - as a reminder of the approaching post.
