Shrovetide occurs seven weeks before Easter and lasts for seven days. Traditionally Shrovetide activities included noise-making, playing tricks, sledding and snowball fighting. In many towns people wore costumes and masks. Each day that week was thoroughly structured and had its own rituals and its own name. Monday was called "Celebration". An important element of preparation for Shrovetide was making ritual food, the blini (pancakes). Meals made of grains, flour, and eggs corresponded to the fertile power of the lower world, which was believed to make everything live go up all the way to the crown of the World Tree. Thus, these elements were material symbols of connection between the two worlds. In this sense, the blini were especially symbolic: they were as if connecting two important spheres - the wet one (water, or milk, or butter) and the dry and sunny one, - the blini are usually prepared on a very hot pan; circle-shaped golden blinis resemble the sun. It therefore becomes clear that eating blinis, this whole Shrovetide gluttony, was a typical magic ritual, which actually represented a fight with the evil destruction forces. The spring return of the sun is directly connected with the amount of consumed food.

Monday was the "Celebration" - children would be singing ritual songs, which will contain motives of saying good-bye to the winter and welcoming the spring:

Another important ritual involved tobogganing - this movement from top to bottom imitated a link between the two worlds

Another important Monday good harvest/good wealth ritual: both children and adults would go door to door persistently asking for blini.

The rest of the week was filled with tobogganing, entertaining guests and enjoying traditional gluttony. People were singing, riding troikas, kissing and hugging each other.

One more ritual was a visit paid by sons-in-law to their mothers-in-law, and mutual visits, the so-called "Mother-in-Law's Evenings", which were paid on Friday.

An essential ritual consisted of all sorts of manipulations with the straw scarecrow of Shorvetide (Maslenitsa). The scarecrow was dressed as a man or as a woman. They would put it on a sledge and take it up the hills singing songs of praise. According to ethnographic data, young people most often dressed up as gypsies accompanied the scarecrow of Maslenitsa. Sometimes, a woman dressed as Maslenitsa making butter at the spinning wheel would sit next to the scarecrow of Maslenitsa.

They would play with the scarecrow till Sunday, and after that it would be burnt on a special fire, following a special ritual of Maslenitsa's mourning and funeral, often times mocking similar church rituals. This burning, apart from the symbolism of cleansing, and reflecting pagan funeral rituals, also had a connection with the heaven fire and with ascent leading to the spring surge of vital forces of nature.

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