IT HAS BEGUN!!!!!
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MASLYANITSA IS an old Russian Holiday, also known as BUTTER WEEK or Pancake Week. It is celebration of welcoming Spring and "killing" winter { by burning a doll! ;) } and happens right before Lent. This tradition of welcoming spring and killing winter has been around for over one thousand years, and since the introduction of Christianity in the tenth century, the government has tried to suppress Maslennitsa and other similar celebrations so that it fits into a Christian society. Pancake week is divided into three parts, i.e. meeting of Maslyanitsa on Monday, the high point of the celebration, on Thursday, and the last day, the good-bye day, which comes on Sunday morning.The traditional dish for "Maslennitsa" are big round hot pan-cakes, with butter ( Butter = Maslo in Russian, that's where the name of the feast comes from.) Pancakes symbolize the sun. The more butter (or honey, cavier, other delicious things) which was put on the pancake, the hotter the sun was expected to be in the coming summer. Nowadays it is celebrated in the end of February as a merry festival with dances, songs, national costumes, attractions for children, hot tea and pancakes served outdoors."


Maslennitsa is much like Mardi Gras in other regions of the world :the day before the beginning of Lent is called Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) or Carnival. For Christians, Lent is the forty days that Jesus spent in the desert without anything to eat or drink. Lent ends on Easter Sunday.

Carnival is celebrated in February. The most famous carnivals are the ones in New Orleans in Louisiana, Viareggio in Italy and also, the most crazy of all, the one in Rio de Janeiro.

HOW DID IT START?

At the origin of the Carnival there were many old habits from France. For example, the French took a fat cow around the roads of Paris to tell people not to eat meat during Lent. The word "carnival" means in Latin "to take away eating meat". Some people believe the idea for carnival started even earlier with the ancient festivals of the Romans. Many years after it started in Europe carnival spread to America and many other countries.
Official Mardi Gras' website