Shrovetide is full of humour, jokes, superstitions, fortune-telling,and feasting to celebrate the end of winter. It is a merry carnival, a masquerade full of pranks, with a drama performed outdoors to say goodbye to winter and welcome to spring. At dusk, men don humorous, satirical, or animal costumes. Some dress as evil spirits or demons with pitchforks. They go from house to house, deriding housewives or workers lagging behind in their chores.
Many people dress up as traditional characters.
More', a symbol of the clash between winter and spring, is wheeled about in a cart. In one hand she holds a flail, in the other a broom. She cannot make up her mind whether she should continue to flail last year's harvest or start sweeping the yard and doing the spring cleaning. Lent This time of fasting has become Lent in Christian times, but earlier it served a more practical function. This 40-day period between Uzgavenes and Velykos was when the farm animals were busy having their young.