[expand]The defining feature of Užgavėnės was masked procession—community members disguising themselves in elaborate costumes, parading through village making noise, performing satirical skits mocking authority, engaging in behavior normally prohibited by social convention. The masks served multiple functions: they concealed identity allowing normally respectable persons to engage in outrageous conduct without permanent social consequences, they represented spirits and demons being driven away by human mockery, they created temporary suspension of normal hierarchy allowing servants to mock masters and youth to parody elders.
The costumes ranged from simple face coverings to elaborate constructions: animal heads fashioned from wood or straw, grotesque monster faces painted on cloth or carved into masks, exaggerated representations of familiar community types—the drunkard, the gossip, the miser, the beauty. These costumes were not arbitrary disguises but deliberate social commentary, using visual exaggeration to highlight community tensions normally suppressed through polite restraint.
The most important masked figure was Morė—female personification of winter, death, disease, scarcity. She was portrayed through elaborate costume usually involving white or gray fabric suggesting ice and snow, skeletal decorations representing death, sometimes straw stuffing making the figure large and threatening. The Morė figure was ceremonially attacked during climax of Užgavėnės—chased through village, subjected to mock trial accusing her of various crimes against community welfare, ultimately “killed” through burning or drowning or tearing apart, her destruction symbolizing winter’s final defeat.
But destruction was not simple elimination. The Morė ashes or remnants were often scattered on fields—fertilizer for coming agricultural season, acknowledgment that winter’s death fed spring’s birth, understanding that destructive and creative forces were not opposed but complementary. This practical wisdom—that dead matter nourished new growth—was encoded in ritual form accessible to community members who might not articulate sophisticated ecological understanding but could observe that scattered organic matter improved soil fertility.
[/expand]