Russian people have always known how to work and play hard. As the saying goes, “Take note of weekdays and holidays will come on their own.” And come they did. In winter, one of the season’s most revered periods was the twelve days of Christmas. The period begins on Orthodox Christmas, January 7, and lasts through Epiphany, January 19. These two weeks helped to set a framework for the Christmas celebrations, a time filled with festive gatherings and horseback riding…Host Maria Mumicheva set off for a St. Petersburg suburb – the ethnographic village of Shuvalovka, which serves as its own kind of museum of traditional Russian culture.