Meteni 7 weeks before Easter

The celebration has preserved the ancient traditions of New Year's Eve, as ancient Indo-European peoples celebrated New Year's Eve in mid-February. It comes from the early Latvian word "meti", which meant time tower, gauge. The original meaning is preserved in the word "laikmets" (era). The Lithuanian word "metai" still means "year" today.

This holiday is marked by people eating and drinking as much as they want. During this time, pigs were slaughtered, so the traditional holiday foods were pig's head and doughnuts. Parents threw gifts to their children from the top of the room, as if Laima was throwing her gifts from the sky. As with every winter holiday, the ķekatas traveled around the country and visited people.

It is believed that the longer the holiday is celebrated, the better the harvest expected after the summer. The Solstice bonfire is burned when performing rituals of tying a witch's tongue and making donations. The bonfire is used to burn the festive Jāņi wreaths from the past summer. Straw is often burned and in some places straws are hand-made into characters, which are mainly taken from the hills and then burned to drive away winter.