Igbi

Igbi

Sunday nearest February 5

Because February 5 is the day that the sun, it is hoped, will shine for the first time of the year on the village of Khora, and then on Shaitli in the Dagestan region of Russia, the Tsezy (Didoitsy) people celebrate this event marking the middle of winter with a festival known as Igbi.
The name comes from the plural of the Tsezian word ig —a ring-shaped bread similar to a bagel—and the baking of these ritual breads plays a central role in the celebration, which involves a number of masked and costumed characters playing traditional roles. Six botsi, or wolves, carrying wooden swords go from house to house collecting the igbi that the women have been baking in preparation for their arrival. The bagels are strung on a long pole known as the giri, and those who fail to cooperate are hit with the swords or have their shoes filled with wet snow and ice.
The children get up early on this day, which is now observed on the Sunday nearest February 5 so they don't have to miss school, and go through the village collecting the igbi that have been made especially for them.
Igbi is also a day of reckoning. All through the year the young organizers of the feast have kept notes of the good and bad deeds of the villagers. Now after all the igbi have been collected, there is a ceremony in the center of the village in which the kvidili —a traditional figure wearing an animal-skin mask resembling no known animal; lately it looks like a horse with horns and a big mouth like a crocodile—reads out the names of those who have committed a transgression (such as public drunkenness) during the year.
The unlucky ones are dragged to the river and immersed up to their knees through a hole in the ice. Those who are congratulated for their good deeds are handed an ig. At the end of the festival, the kvidili is symbolically slain with a wooden sword.

SOURCES:
FolkWrldHol-1999, p. 122
(c)

Holidays, Festivals, and Celebrations of the World Dictionary, Fourth Edition. © 2010 by Omnigraphics, Inc.