The only pagan holiday legalized by the Orthodox Church — Maslenitsa, or Cheese Week — is widely celebrated across the country. Each of the seven days of fun, entertainment and pancakes has its own name (“Meeting”, “Zaigryshi”, “Gourmand”) and traditions.

The traditional “Karagod” rite is conducted in Pogost village on St. George's Day in spring. The rite was the first in Belarus to be awarded the status of intangible historical and cultural value in 2004 and put under state protection. The performer and curator of the rite is the folklore-ethnographic ensemble “Mezhdurechie”. On the initiative of the ensemble, other holidays are organized in the region.

Initially, the time of Christian Easter and the Jewish Feast of Passover coincided. In 325, at the First Council of Nicaea, they decided to celebrate Easter on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox, and provided that this day the Jewish don’t celebrate their Passover. The ancient Slavs originally called Easter a spring festival in honor of the sun, the awakening of the nature and approaching of the “great days” of field work. With the adoption of Christianity, the Festival got its spiritual meaning and the cleansing power. Spiritual preparations for Easter last 7 weeks – the Great Fast – and end with the Holy Week, when you start to prepare for the feast itself. On Maundy Thursday you clean the house and the yard. The Saturday is great and valuable, as it is the last day before Easter. On Holy Saturday, a day before Easter, you prepare, cook, and fry a lot of different dishes, bake cakes, color and paint patterns on eggs. In the evening of the same day you smarten yourself up, take the “paskha” and eggs prepared for consecration, and go to church for the vespers service. Eggs were the main element of celebration. They were colored with the help of onion skin or bark of trees, which gave them a red color (also there were “pisanki” – Painted Easter eggs – eggs, painted with different patterns). Elderly people advised to peel the egg before consecration to make the holiness going inside the egg easier. The red Easter egg is a symbol of Christ’s suffering.