Spring Rites

In 2001 I spent my first winter in the city of Novosibirsk, in western Siberia. That March my friends and I went to the central city park to celebrate the arrival of spring. The highlight of the event was burning a straw dummy in a bonfire, to drive off winter. As I watched children throw logs onto the pyre, I marveled at the fact that I was celebrating the onset of spring in –25º C degree temperatures after one of the harshest winters in recent memory. I was wearing a down coat (guaranteed to protect against temperatures as low as –40º C) and wool-lined boots, surrounded by people wearing fur hats and coats. But indeed spring soon arrived; piles of snow as tall as my waist melted in late March, flowers emerged in April, the white squirrels began their molt, turning a ruddy brown, accompanied by the arrival of the swallows and red-breasted bullfinches. That winter taught me why the spring rituals are the most beloved and elaborate of the Russian yearly cycle. Not only was the earth reborn in front of me, but the people were rejuvenated, shedding their winter clothes and becoming more lively and cheerful as the days passed.

In the nineteenth century, when the agrarian cycle was the primary concern of every Russian villager, spring rituals not only celebrated the shift in the seasons and beginning of a new growing season, but also the most important religious holiday of the Orthodox calendar, Easter. As a result, these holidays were all centered on Easter and calculated according to its location on the calendar. Easter itself is determined with a system originally based on the Jewish lunar calendar used to establish the date of Passover. Within Orthodoxy, Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox (April 3 old style/March 21 new style), typically after Passover. The main holidays of the season, Maslenitsa, Semik, and Troitsa all are dependent on the timing of Easter. But spring rituals were a multi-layered system that related to the life cycle as well. Most weddings in nineteenth century villages occurred in the fall and winter, so that the spring rites also celebrated newlyweds and the upcoming betrothals that would occur over the next six months. These rites also centered on commemoration of the dead, who were thought to return to the earth as part of the spring cycle and who could influence the crops in the fields. While this idea may well have had its base in pre-Christian religion, it formed a unified system with Christian doctrine relating to Christ’s resurrection at Easter. All three elements were blended to form a symbolic system that unified the major concerns of the villager: the agrarian cycle, the human life cycle, and Orthodox faith.

Maslenitsa: The Russian Carnival

In many European countries, the Carnival season lasts from January 6 (Epiphany or the Feast of the Three Kings) until Ash Wednesday, when Lent begins. In Russia the season was much shorter. Maslenitsa (“Butter Week”) began on the Saturday before Lent, eight weeks before Easter. On that Saturday, the people opened the spring ritual cycle with a commemoration of the dead. These periodic roditelskiye subboty (“Parents’ Saturdays”) involved visiting relatives’ graves and sharing a meal with them there, leaving behind some food and drink, usually vodka, on the graves. Women would often sing the traditional Russian laments during the visit as well. During Maslenitsa week, people could not eat meat, but were still allowed to consume butter and other dairy products forbidden during the Lenten fast. These products became the focus of the celebration, accompanied by the most important symbol of Maslenitsa, bliny (crepes). They were served at every meal for guests and for the family. It was the custom to leave the first pancake made that week on a windowsill for the souls of the dead, who were thought to return to the earth to participate in the spring rites. Bliny in particular were used to commemorate the dead in both funeral meals and in other memorial rites (pominki).

But the feasting was only one part of this holiday. During the week, people would play games, sled down ice hills, ride in troikas, and celebrate newly-married couples. Maslenitsa was particularly famous for its noisiness, laughter, overeating, and overt eroticism, all designed to celebrate the return of spring. The songs sung throughout the week focus on these elements and on the upcoming Lenten season. The central rite was the Seeing Off of Maslenitsa. The last Sunday of the celebration was called Proshcheny (Farewell or Forgiveness Day). In Russian the verb proshchatsya indicates both saying farewell (to winter, to the celebration itself) and asking forgiveness. People performed rituals referring to both meanings on this day. For example, they asked forgiveness of both the living and the dead in preparation for the Lenten season. In a ritual called provody maslenitsy (“seeing off Maslenitsa”) villagers also pulled a straw dummy dressed in woman’s clothing (the effigy of winter) on a sleigh around the village and then to the outskirts of town, where they destroyed it by pulling it to bits. The dummy’s remains were either thrown into the fields or burned on the frozen river to drive off winter and welcome spring, while people sang songs about its destruction.

Zaklikaniye vesny: The Invocation of Spring

While Maslenitsa may have driven off winter, apparently the Russian villager could not be sure that this act alone was enough to bring on spring. This holiday was often followed by an invocation to spring, typically between the Feast of the Forty Martyrs on March 9 (old style) and the Feast of the Adoration of the Virgin Mary on March 25 (old style). People baked cookies in the form of larks, cranes, and storks – all symbols of spring. Unmarried girls carried the cookies out onto the roof and threw them off, asking the birds to fly in and bring spring with them. Young unmarried women also often went to a hill near the village, where they lit a bonfire and danced a khorovod (circle dance) around it, all the while calling spring with songs characterized by high-pitched cries.

Paskha: Easter¹

The last week of Lent was named Willow Week, in honor of Verbnoye Voskreseniye, Willow Sunday, which the Russians used in lieu of palms. The willow is a particularly good symbol of the arrival of spring and new growth, as it is a tree that blooms early (pussy willows in particular) and also will root if a branch is stuck into the earth. It was proceeded on Saturday by the feast to commemorate the Christ’s resurrection of Lazarus. On Willow Sunday people returned from the church service with blessed willow branches, which women used as switches to hit children on the way home, saying “Willow lash, beat until tears flow!” This act was designed to protect the children and was more of a game than a serious punishment. The pussy willow catkins were fed to livestock (for protection). The branches were also placed in the icon corner until the following year, to protect the house and family within it.

Chisty Chetverg (Clean Thursday) of Easter week was dedicated to an array of purification rituals. People bathed themselves early in the morning, often with water containing a silver coin, which was said to bring good health. Juniper and fir branches were placed around the house and burned as incense to purify the home. The house and courtyard were cleaned and swept. Straw beds were burned, and new ones made. The mistress of the household would walk around the house and yard, astride a mop or broom, sprinkling the circle with grain to protect the home from evil forces and also from bedbugs, cockroaches and the like.

The nighttime Easter service is the major celebration of the Orthodox calendar. The church was usually shrouded and dark, and a casket for Christ was placed at the front near the altar. Not long before midnight, which marked the dawning of Easter and thus the miracle of Christ’s resurrection from the dead, the congregation lit candles, and the priests and deacons holding icons led the people in a religious procession around the church three times. They reentered the church, which had been unshrouded and illuminated and pronounced Khristos voskres – “Christ has risen.” It was followed by a feast that featured colored eggs, kulich, a sweet wheat bread, and paskha – sweetened farmer’s cheese with fruit and nuts, and pork. All of the food consumed at this feast had been blessed by priests before the Easter service.

Commemorations of all the dead took place throughout the week. People would congratulate the ancestors on Easter at various times throughout the ritual. Either as part of the Easter celebration or on Radunitsa (Tuesday or Thursday of the following week), they would kiss a colored egg (usually shelled) and then bury or leave it at a relative’s grave. They also ate a meal of pies, cakes, and colored eggs at the cemetery, placing some of the food and vodka for the ancestors on the graves. They would whisper their problems to the dead while laying on the gravesite, in the hopes that they could help solve these problems. Women would often lament the dead before the meal as part of these commemorative festivals.

Semik and Troitsa:

The Seventh Thursday and Pentecost

The seventh week after Easter (called Rusalie, Rusalnaya Nedelya, ‘Rusalka Week’) marked the end of the spring cycle and the entry into summer. The center of the celebration was Thursday of that week, called Semik. The holiday was dedicated to the birch tree. The birch was closely connected in folk symbolism with childbearing and with the fertility of the fields, protection of the village from hail and the ability to call forth rain. Typically on Semik unmarried girls would go to the forest and weave wreaths from birch branches. They would kiss each other through the wreaths, promising each other friendship, becoming sisters in the process. This step was particularly important, because the girls were likely to marry that year, typically leaving their friends and “sisters” behind for their husband’s village. This rite then bound them, but also recognized that they were soon to be separated by the demands of the marriage rite.

On Troitsa, Pentecost Sunday, the unmarried women would tell their fortunes using the wreaths. They might have, for example, thrown the wreaths into a stream. If the wreath floated up or downstream, that would indicate the direction from which their husband would come that year. If it floated, but did not move, it meant the girl would not marry that year. If the wreath sank, it foretold the girl’s death during that year. Or they “read” the wreaths based on their physical condition to tell their fates. On Semik they cut a young birch, which they brought into the village and decorated it with ribbons, wildflowers, kerchiefs or dressed in maiden’s clothing. They typically had a meal featuring fried eggs under the tree. After Pentecost the girls would carry the tree out and bury it in the earth, singing songs in its honor. People attended mass on Pentecost in a church decorated with newly-mown grass and birch branches as well.

The week was also said to be the time when the rusalki, mermaids said to be the spirits of unbaptized children or drowned maidens, emerged from the water to dance in the fields at night. The rusalki, like the birch with which they were associated, could bring fertility to the fields and rain for growing plants. Rusalki continued their dances until St. Peter’s Day on July 12 (old style). While they were positive forces in this sense, interaction with them was also dangerous. They tickled men, trying to capture them and carry them back to their watery abodes. On Semik, women and girls tried to appease the rusalki, because they could harm livestock. In essence the wreaths the girls wove and threw into the water, the decorations on the birch tree and the meal under it were offerings of sorts to the female spirits. The rusalki dwelling in the streams were powerful fortune-tellers and “controlled” the wreaths’ actions. Unmarried girls also sang songs alongside the rivers at this time of year, in an effort to get the rusalki to tell them their fate.

There are many legends telling of how human men captured a rusalka by putting a cross around her neck during these annual dances and then marrying her. Typically they end badly, with the rusalka escaping and leaving her family behind. Villagers often performed a rite called provody rusalok (“seeing off the Rusalkas”), in which a young girl dressed in white, with unbraided hair decorated with flowers, stood in for the rusalka. While the unmarried men and women sang songs and danced, the rusalka was in the center. She would throw water on the participants, essentially asking the water spirits to bring rain for the crops that summer. Then the girl walked out to the fields on the hands of the villagers, jumped down (said to bring the fertility to the crops for the year) and then began to chase the people, trying to tickle them. In some areas there was also a burial of the rusalka. In this case, the rusalka was a rag doll wearing a dress. They placed it in a small coffin, covered with flowers. Unmarried men and women and newlywed women carried it out to the river’s edge. The girls dressed as priests and deacons and said a “funeral mass.” They would comb her hair, kiss her farewell, close the coffin and tie stones to it, so that it would sink in the river. After the funeral, they sang songs and performed circle dances.

Like much of the spring cycle, these holidays are related to remembering the dead, but in this case the focus is on the unquiet dead, namely stillborn children or those who died violent or unnatural deaths, which clearly included the rusalki. People would often organize commemorative meals in their honor on Semik and visit graveyards, leaving behind money and eggs on the graves of those who were suspected to be unquiet souls.

The spring rites then celebrated the return of warmth after winter’s cold. But the symbolic system was closely connected to the life cycle and to religious beliefs about Christ’s resurrection as well. These rituals focused on the growing cycle, by honoring plants, like the birch, and by performing rites designed to bring rain and ensure that the crops grew well in the upcoming year. But they also were closely tied to the ancestors buried in the earth, who shared a close connection to the crops as well as to their living descendents. The souls of dead returned to the earth at this time, and the villagers commemorated the bond between living and the dead frequently throughout the spring, venerating them and their graves. The motif of resurrection, both of the dead and of the earth after winter’s sleep, paralleled the belief in the central Orthodox doctrine about Christ’s resurrection at Easter. As a result, the people celebrated life emerging from death in all its forms. They emphasized the new life created by the weddings that had recently taken place and those soon to follow, with the central role played by newlyweds and those of marriageable age in spring holidays. The spring cycle was the most joyful and celebratory of all the Russian yearly-cycle rituals, but it was also the most symbolically complex and meaningful. RL