History and culture: "There is a Pancake Week" exhibition in St. Petersburg

"There is a Pancake Week" exhibition is open until March 22, 2016, at the State Museum of History of Religion in St. Petersburg.

The Pancake Week is a cheerful folk festival dedicated to winter’s send-off and a welcoming of spring. The origins of the Pancake Week or Maslenitsa go to the distant pre-Christian times.

After the adoption of Christianity in Russia through the efforts of the Church the Pancake Week lost its former sacred significance and ceased to be tied to the date of the vernal equinox. As the week before Lent it falls every year on a different time, depending on the day of Easter celebration. However, the majority of Carnival Traditions and rituals remain. The Russian Pancake Week festivities, as a broad cheerful feast, have become a seven-day holiday, every day of which had its own significance.

The exhibition includes the copies of museum objects associated with solar gods and the gods of fertility, photos of temples dedicated to the cult of the sun in different cultures and religions, and the works of the students of children's art schools of St. Petersburg.