#shrovetide

🥞 С Масленицей, сладкие! 🥞

Locals welcome spring by becoming “monsters” during Slovenia’s Shrovetide festival, called Pust. During Ravenski Pust, young unmarried men dressed as monsters called “Ugly Ones” dust boys with ash. Socks filled with ash are playfully used to pummel the boys; it’s a custom intended to initiate their entry into manhood. “I’ll explain it this way,” says Blaž Rakušček, the president of Ravenski Pust, “if my final exams at school fell on Pust, I’d rather engage in Pust and have to redo the academic year.”

happy Shrovetide Sunday!!!!!

"Shrovetide, now better known as Mardi Gras, is the traditional period of indulgence before the fasting and self-discipline of Lent. In the seventeenth-century Netherlands, it was also the occasion for theatrical performances by the painters’ guilds. Here, Hals depicts two stock figures from these plays, Hans Worst, with a sausage dangling from his cap, and Pekelharing, who sports a garland of salted fish and eggs. They flank a richly dressed girl (probably a boy in drag, as women were not permitted to perform on these occasions). Still-life elements litter the foreground, evoking both the traditional foods of the festival and an abundance of erotic innuendo."

Pancake Tuesday (Shrove Tuesday) (1916) by Boris Kustodiev. Russian Museum.

The festival itself begins on Shrove Tuesday with a parade of two ox carts, one with a wooden bust representing “pai velho” (“old father”, symbolizing winter) and the other “das Ervas” (“of herbs”, symbolizing spring). Behind follow musicians and neighbors, who sing traditional songs. Amongst them, a dozen figures in white lit a candle, and carry cross at the front, while groaning and shouting: “Goodbye Old Father! You were a good Father”. At night, the figure is burned in the center of the village, with a parallel reading of local jokes in a satirical manner. The bust, of course, is saved for next year's festivities. This type of ritual with medieval roots is carried out in Castelo and Parada, on Fat Sunday and Shrove Tuesday.