Moscow, Russia - A Siberian weather front brought temperatures of -22F (-33 C) to Moscow yesterday but Orthodox believers observed Epiphany at frozen rivers and lakes all the same.
Epiphany ceremonies are held all across Russia around Jan 19. Yesterday priests in the suburb of Strogino led believers to the Moscow River where they plunged into icy water through holes cut with chainsaws.
"Fantastic," Olga Ladushkina said after a bracing paddle dressed only in a bathing suit. "I do this for joy, for health and so my children have an example to follow."
Said to purge the faithful of their sins with the added benefit of hardening their constitution for the year, the ceremony is the old Russian Gregorian calendar's equivalent of Epiphany, which falls on Jan 6 in the West.
It is a symbolic re-enactment of John the Baptist's submerging of Jesus in the River Jordan.
The most extreme ceremony took place in the eastern Siberian city of Yakutsk where the temperature reached -58F (-50C).
A large tent was set up over the ice hole to provide at least some shelter from the cold.
The cold front sweeping over European Russia this week has claimed numerous victims and disrupted transport and power supplies.