Only recently in post-soviet Russian history Mother's day was introduced. There is Father's day but it's actually the one people celebrate in the US. It's not official holidays in Russia anyway, so in fact not many Russians are aware about the exact dates for those. Well, Mother's Day is celebrated last Sunday of November, but I had to google it.
Instead of those, from Soviet times we still celebrate February, 23rd and March, 8th.
The first was the day of the Soviet army and now it's called The Day of Fatherland's Defenders. Obviously it's men's day. And girls are cheering up all men, even if they have no relationship to military. (BTW did you know that Russian guys are obliged to serve in the army, but it sucks and many of them avoid this? :) ) The scale of the holiday reminds New Year, when everybody celebrates. What makes it even more pleasant, is that exactly in two weeks comes 8th of March, which was and remains International Women's Day. And grateful men cheer all women around, usually presenting flowers, gifts and stuff like that :).
Both are official holidays. And what Russians often do, is that they "move" weekends to make a row with official holidays. Example: Feb., 23rd was Tuesday. So the government made Saturday, the 27th, as official working day, but Monday, the 22nd, a holiday. So we had 4 days to celebrate in a row.
And yes, we did! See how our beautiful girls cheered guys for 23rd (it's kinda related to military, remember?)
Guys responded back for 8th with all their love and creativity. As one of our wonder-girls have put it "The guys even made a customized song for us". I guess you can understand why we love these holidays.
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