20 March - Tuesday

Komodetsy - Pancake week
O Khanami is the festival of flowering and admiration of sakura in Japan
International Day of Happiness
Earth Day
Day of spring equinox
International Day of Astrology
World Social Work Day
International day without meat

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Komodetsy - Pancake week
Now many have forgotten, and some never knew that Shrovetide is not just a meeting of spring. Perhaps, very few people will remember the assumption that earlier in Shrovetide Maslenitsa was called Komoditsey, marking the approach of the spring equinox. The vernal equinox, which in the modern calendar falls on March 20 or 21, is one of the four major holidays of the year in the ancient pagan tradition and one of the most ancient. In fact - this is the agricultural New Year.
In addition to the meeting of Spring and the celebration of the beginning of the New Year, this day was also revered by the Slavic Bear God. There is an opinion that in the antiquity of the bear the Slavs called Kom (and hence the saying "the first pancake to comas", ie to bears). Therefore, early in the morning, before breakfast, with songs, dances and jokes, the villagers carried "pancake victims" (pancakes baked for the holiday) to the Forest of God and laid them on stumps. And after that, feasts and wide festivities began.
The waiting-room was waiting, they were carefully prepared for it: they poured steep bank slopes for skating, built high ice and snow mountains, fortresses, small towns. It was considered compulsory to go before the last days of the holiday to the bathhouse, in order to wash off all the bad things that were in the past year. Work on these days was forbidden.
On the ice of lakes and rivers, stormed snow towns, in which the effigy of Marena was sheltered under the protection of mummers. There also fierce fisticuffs were fought, to which men of different ages and from different villages came running. They fought seriously, believing that the blood spilled would serve as a good sacrifice for the coming crop.
On the last day of festive festivities, ritual performances were mainly performed, accompanying the winter. They burned a stuffed Marena stuck on a pole, which was imposed on them by "nauzas" - the old ones that had served their own Oberegs or just old rags with a slander, in order to burn everything bad and obsolete on the fire of the ceremonial fire.
And immediately after the holiday, hard everyday life began, people were accepted for agricultural work, which lasted throughout the warm season.