Burning winter

While a thick blanket of icy snow still covers the ground, Russians here in Volgograd are starting to mention spring a little more often. This is a result, not so much of the rising temperatures, though it looks like we will be above freezing most of this week, but of the lengthening days and the holidays that come with them.
Masleneetza is a week long holiday that was the same week as Mardi Gras, with roughly the same original meaning. For the Orthodox, it is a time of celebration leading up to a Sunday service which I believe centers on contrition and then about 45 days of fasting. Their version of fasting has to do with not eating meat or other animal products, and probably some other things as well. I've talked to a few people who are fasting, but haven't really gotten the whole list. The Masleneetza events aren't as crazy as a New Orleans Mardi Gras. The celebration mostly consists of eating lots and lots of blini, known in America as blinzes. These are a very thin pancake topped with either sweet or savory fillings and then wrapped up. They resemble, but taste nothing like, a small burrito or a flat eggroll. And they are really, really good. One of our Russian friends, Pasha, got his mom to make us some since we had only had the kind that come from the blini stands. These had tvorg (like cottage cheese) and fruit filling.
The other aspect of Masleneetza, which I heard about but didn't get to see, consists of crazy winter games. These are apparently very ancient in origin, and I think they were encouraged during Soviet times as they weren't religious. One tradition is for men to climb tall poles, bare chested, to retrieve a pair of shoes from the top. Another is to build a large snow fort and to have a pitched battle over it. Ivor attended one of these near Moscow last year and said that grown men were literally pushing each other off large snow battlements and one had to be carted away by ambulance.
Those who celebrate from this perspective see Masleneetza as marking the end of winter. In keeping with this, effigies of Winter (which happens to be female) are burned. Not too many people participate in this tradition outside of the villages or school festivals, according to my students, but Pasha did. The next day, the first day of Lent, we had a very heavy snowfall. We've been told that we should blame it all on Pasha's inability to properly burn Winter.
In addition to this festival, we've had 2 public holidays: Defender's of the Fatherland Day, also known as Men's Day, and International Women's Day, which was yesterday and is why I'm not at school now. I haven't been able to learn of any traditions associated with these holidays, other than enjoying a day off of work or school, but they've been fun. We had people over at our apartment until about 2:30 this morning. There are some British students here to study Russian, and three girls from that group came, and about 10 or so Russians who were friends or friends of friends. It was the first time I'd every met most of them, but lots of them spoke good English and one even spoke pretty good German. I was surprised none of our neighbors complained, but I don't think we were the only ones having a party in our block. Maybe our older neighbors just expected noisy parties and escaped to their dachas for the extended weekend.