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“The nightingale is a small bird, and even it knows when the month of May is,” as once in the old days, we are looking forward to this month. The day of spring, the day of the sun, Easter… Now we are having the first picnics, preparing Easter cakes and marking the days on the calendar until summer. How did you spend May and what did you think about it before?
I would like to think that when the third month of spring was in Russia – until its Byzantine name came to our ancestors – no one “toiled”. But no. Toiled. And how! Although it was called more optimistically – grass or pollen, it was considered one of the most difficult months of the year.
First, hungry: all supplies have long been eaten. One salvation – the cattle is already on pasture. “May grass feeds even the hungry!” they said in the old days. Secondly, for the rural way of life it was a month of active crops. The peasant had to work very hard in the field in May. So many that even getting married at that time was considered indecent: well, what kind of wedding, when you need to harvest for the whole year?
By the way, the saying “I would be glad to marry, but May does not order” is found not only in the Russian village. Even in ancient Rome, it was believed that in May the wedding is played “only malicious and dissolute.” Decent Romans waited for June – in similar beliefs.
Even cows celebrate on May 1, or Beware of witches!
Those born in the Soviet Union associate May 1 with demonstrations, slogans, flags and trade union movements. But it was not always so. For the first time, May Day as a day of international solidarity of workers was celebrated in Warsaw in 1890: then 10 workers went on strike.
And before that, city mayevkas were considered a holiday for students. Pupils arranged games in nature, students sang cants and acted out comedies, which were composed for them by teachers of philosophy and rhetoric. So, in modern Finland, which until 1917 was part of the Russian Empire, May 1 is still considered a student day.
Historians write that we borrowed this tradition from the Germans: in the cities it has become customary to celebrate the First of May in this way since the time of Peter the Great. And in the villages this day was called “Macarius” or “Jeremiah”. The Slavic peoples believed that on this day it was necessary to protect livestock and crops from witches. The branches of nettle, linden, bird cherry or consecrated willow “lambs” helped in this – they should have been stuck in the windows and doors of the house and barn or in a dunghill.
Rain, rain, May rain, you will make my hair grow
The night before May 1 was considered especially dangerous by the Slavs: people believed that at that time witches were flying on a burning broomstick. Moreover, men and women fought with them in different ways. Men, in order to drive the witches out of the village, went around cracking whips, smeared the gates and windows with clay, and lit fires. Women stripped naked and went around the village with a plow, plowed it with a furrow. Remember this February tradition? Apparently, Slavic women acted according to the principle “In any incomprehensible situation, undress and go around the village.”
Pets celebrated May 1 especially famously. They were doused with an infusion of fragrant herbs, which should certainly be stolen from the shepherd. Cows came out to graze dressed up, with horns decorated with flowers – the first pasture, after all! In addition, our ancestors believed that May Day dew and rain had healing powers, so they washed dew on lichen, eyes, abscesses.
The girls, standing in the rain that day, said: “Rain, rain, May rain, my hair will grow from you.” I admit, I also stood in the rain as a child in the hope that my hair would grow better. Hair, unfortunately, did not become thicker from this. Most likely because after this ceremony my mother washed them with shampoo for me.
Hey passerby, don’t pass!
According to the May calendar of the Russian village, almost every day is devoted to the sowing of a particular crop – there are special days for peas, flax, cucumbers. I like the custom that accompanied the sowing of wheat on Arsentiev Day – May 8th. People baked wheat pies and went out with them to crossroads beyond the outskirts.
It was important to meet a wanderer or a beggar and treat him to a pie. And if he did not meet, it was believed that the peasant had somehow angered God, since a good man was not sent to him “to share the bread of labor.” “To be thin if you return home with a votive pie, and even worse – to eat it yourself: there will be neither a wanderer nor a crippled passerby, feed this pie to the birds!” — that was the only way out.
“A passer-by is a man of God,” they believed in the villages. And if you did him good by treating him with bread, then the earth will give you fertility in return. All according to the boomerang law.
Why are eggs painted at Easter?
This year, May 2 is an important Christian holiday – Easter. Why is it customary to eat eggs on this day and why are they painted? According to Christian tradition, Mary Magdalene came with a sermon to the Roman emperor Tiberius. Mary was poor and, in order not to go empty-handed, brought an egg as a gift to the emperor with the words: “Christ is Risen!” Tiberius replied that it was impossible for the dead to rise again, just as it is impossible for an egg to turn red from white. At that moment, the egg turned red.
But colored eggs are much older than Christianity. Ancient pagans dyed eggs with animal blood and even sacrificial human blood to use them in burial rites, cleansing from sins, meeting the new year and spring. The only thing that coincides in the old and modern traditions is red. In Christianity, it is a symbol of the blood of the crucified Christ and his resurrection. Blood is life.
The egg itself for the ancient Slavs was a symbol of life, since they imagined the world in the form of a large egg. In the middle of it, like a yolk, is the Earth. The upper part of the “yolk” is the living world of people, the lower side is the world of the dead. And around the Earth, like egg whites and shells, there are nine heavens. Because of this, we say not only “heaven” but also “heaven”.
The oldest references to the decoration and ritual use of eggs date back to the 5th millennium BC. Authors of the book “100 Great Treasures. Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur” suggest that the Easter tradition came from Ancient Egypt, where people endowed eggs with a sacred meaning. True, ostriches. Decorated with lines and ornaments, they were placed in the grave as a symbol of rebirth and new life that awaited the deceased after death.
They lay eggs in a coffin in the villages even now. For example, my grandmother on Trinity wore Easter eggs to the cemetery. After all, ordinary people have long believed that if a consecrated egg is crushed in a cemetery for a “free bird”, then it “will remember the dead and will ask God for them.” There are other beliefs: with the help of an Easter egg, an illness is treated, a fire is extinguished, and even a treasure is searched for. Therefore, they kept it for a long time.
But modern stickers have nothing to do with how eggs were dyed in Russia. Moreover, the church does not approve of stickers with images of saints, since they, along with the shell, then end up in the trash can.