The day preceding all weeks or periods of Lent, except the Nativity of Christ, is always Sunday and is called Shrovetide. Accordingly, the day before Great Lent is also called Great or Main Barekendan. Barekendan means good life, a memory of the first human happiness depicted in the Book of Genesis in the story of Adam and Eve's "paradise" life, the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin reports.
Shrovetide is the first of the Sundays of Great Lent.
On Shrovetide, people rejoice and have fun, taste delicious food, and organize various games and dances, as if symbolizing life in paradise, where man could taste all the fruits and enjoy everything except the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
On the Saturday preceding Shrovetide proper, during the evening service, the curtains of the altars of all churches are closed and opened for the Liturgy of the Holy Resurrection. During Great Lent, the curtain is opened only on Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, the commemoration of the Last Supper of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the institution of the Holy Eucharist, the ceremony of the Washing of the Feet, the Entry of St. Gregory the Illuminator into the Virap, the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, if they occur during the days of Great Lent.
