Pagan Festival Shout Out : Old Slavic Velja Noc

Spirits of the dead visit their living relatives, overseen by Veles, Lord of the Dead. People wearing animal masks and wool cloaks wandered through the villages representing the dead, and a grain effigy of the Morana of the old year was burned. Morana and Jarilo are born of Solntse (Goddess of the Sun) and Perun (God of the Sky). Veles steals Jarilo and raises him in Virey, realm of the dead. [a/k/a Wielkanoc]

Veles is one of few Slavic gods for which evidence of worship can be found in all Slavic nations. The Primary Chronicle, a historical record of the early Eastern Slavic state, is the earliest and most important record, mentioning a god named Volos several times. Here, Volos is mentioned as god of cattle and peasants, who will punish oath-breakers with diseases, the opposite of Perun who is a described as a ruling god of war who punishes by death in battle. 

Veles also regularly sent spirits of the dead into the living world as his heralds. Festivals in honour of him were held near the end of the year, in winter, when time was coming to the very end of world order, chaos was growing stronger, the borders between worlds of living and dead were fading, and ancestral spirits would return amongst the living. This was the ancient pagan celebration of Velja noc (Great Night), the relic of which still persists amongst many Slavic countries in folk customs of Koleda, a kind of combination of carnival and Halloween, which can happen anywhere from Christmas up to end of February