The end of winter, a premonition of spring, an abundance of food, ruddy girls in headscarves - the pagan charm of Shrovetide has not been lost at all over the years, but on the contrary, has added to the cultural value. There is a lot to do - the science of celebrating Maslenitsa week has been tested and worked out by generations of our ancestors. Every Shrovetide day is scheduled in accordance with the ancient rules - for each of them there is a corresponding fun activity. We studied Shrovetide traditions and found among them those that are bound to please any man. In addition, Shrovetide is the most appropriate time to release the inner pagan and to come off in full. Our material is about Shrovetide entertainment that every man should try at least once.
Bride show
You can watch the girls at any time of the year and on any other day of the week, but only on Shrove Tuesday is this approved by their mothers and aunts. According to tradition, the good fellows on this day went to visit potential brides, ate pancakes and other delicacies, and then took them off to ride on slides, lead round dances and do other pleasant things. Strict parents on this day turned a blind eye to everything, which can still play into your hands today.
Mother-in-law pancakes
On Wednesday, the son-in-law, according to tradition, came to the mother-in-law for the pancakes that she herself prepared. The mother-in-law in every way showed her affection for her daughter's husband, and he, in turn, could not hesitate to talk about everything that did not suit him. Nowadays, this is a great way to eat from the belly and at the same time make friends with the mother of your beloved, because history itself contributes to this.
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Taking a snow town
On Thursday begins Wide Maslenitsa - a time of noisy entertainment and unrestrained fun. The popular names of this day speak for themselves - Razgulyay, Wide revelry, Fracture, Broad Thursday. Entertainment for this day is appropriate - taking the snow town is a game for real men who need to remember the thrill of war in peacetime. The town was built on the river or on the square of the city, village. Usually the town consisted of two walls with a gate between them. Walls of snow drenched in water. The gates could be double in the form of arches - one opposite the other, with upper crossbars. Different figures were installed on the gates made of snow: most often they were a rooster, a bottle and a glass.
Men and young guys took part in the game. The participants were divided into two teams - the besiegers and the besieged. The gates were defended by footmen, and the horsemen were attacking. Taking the town meant destroying it. The besieged defended themselves with branches, brooms, and shovels they covered the attackers with snow. The horses were scared off with blank shots from guns. The game ended with the obligatory destruction of the town. The first one to break through the gate was considered the winner. After the game, the winner was dipped into a snowdrift. The game often ended with fractures and other injuries, which more than once served as a reason for administrative prohibitions. However, no one was offended by the broken faces, and there were no cases of revenge for thousands of years.
Climbing the pole
In a simplified version of the game, instead of building a snow fortress, a vertical pillar was installed, which was also called a town. A bottle of wine, a handkerchief, a roast rooster or a pig was tied to the top of the pillar. The pillar was smeared with pork fat. The winner had to climb to the top of the pillar and withdraw the prize.
Wall to wall
And yet, the most favorite male fun on Shrovetide was fist fights. The popularity of wall-to-wall battles is also evidenced by the memories of eyewitnesses - Pushkin and Lermontov, Bazhov and Gilyarovsky, as well as studies of the first Russian ethnographers, descriptors of folk life - Zabelin and Sakharov, lines of police protocols and state decrees.
The name "wall" comes from the traditional battle formation, in which the sides of the fighters lined up in a dense line of several rows and went like a solid wall towards the enemy. The battle consisted of separate fights and usually lasted for several hours, until one of the parties finally overpowered the other. Wall constructions have direct analogies with the constructions of the Old Russian army.
The scale of mass fist fights was very different and depended only on the number of males in villages or cities. They fought street to street, village to village. Often, fist fights gathered several thousand participants. Wherever fistfights took place, there were permanent traditional places for fighting. In winter, rivers usually fought on the ice. This custom of fighting on a frozen river is explained by the fact that the flat, snow-covered and compacted ice surface was a comfortable and spacious area for fighting. In addition, the river served as a natural border dividing a city or region into two camps.
Burning effigy
Despite the fact that burning a scarecrow is not a purely masculine entertainment, it allows you to fully experience the heady sense of triumph from a successfully lived winter. Contemplation of the burning figure, personifying all the bad in your life, will calm your nerves after fist fights and prepare you for a new, better life this year.