Maslenitsa

Held during the week before Great Lent, with its exact dates shifting each year according to the Orthodox Easter calendar, Maslenitsa stands as Russia's most joyful traditional holiday — a week of festivities that blends genuinely ancient pagan roots with later Christian tradition. Long before Russia adopted Christianity in 988, Slavic communities marked the return of spring with a cult of the sun, baking round pancakes on hot stones in the shape of the sun itself to welcome its return after the long winter.

The blini, thin golden pancakes made rich with butter, eggs and milk, remain the festival's absolute centrepiece, topped with everything from caviar and smoked salmon to sour cream and jam. Each day of the week carries its own specific rituals: Monday welcomes the holiday and the construction of Lady Maslenitsa, a straw effigy representing winter; the following days bring visits between families, sledding, snow fortress building and games; and the week builds toward Sunday, known as Forgiveness Day, when people ask and grant forgiveness for the year's grievances before the evening's culminating bonfire, where the straw effigy is ceremonially burned to carry away the cold along with it.

Held in cities and towns across the country, with particularly striking celebrations in the historic cities of Suzdal, Vladimir and Veliky Novgorod, Maslenitsa offers visitors a rare, genuinely festive window into Russian folk tradition — one that even survived being officially discouraged during the Soviet era, precisely because people loved it too much to give it up.