When in the beginning of the year the head of the institute of national memory Vyatrovich threatened to reform the Ukrainian holiday calendar, I was amazed by one moment. Among my acquaintances - both close and distant, and hooded - the greatest indignation was caused by the offer to cancel the May holidays. Although the same May Day - a conditional holiday, and not for nothing in our days it is called the Ukrainian folk festival Funeral potatoes! But even more surprising is that the celebration of the May days is as if laid in our mentality. No matter how in what century the May holidays were called - it is important that we celebrate them for a thousand years! And all these days are united by one name of Rusalia. In our time, few remember the holiday of Rusal. Even fewer people know that, for example, the New Year is also Rusalia! But before you forget the name of one of the oldest Kiev holidays, of which we (rare luck!) Know a surprisingly large number - it has been celebrated for at least a thousand years! The Rusalia are known even in princely Kyiv, and for the first time they were mentioned in the Tale of Bygone Years under the year 1067, and later under 1174 in the Ipatiev Chronicle we read: "... Vladimirid had a serious illness, with which he also chased the 10th. Introduced in the Rusal week ". Afterwards, the festival is repeatedly denounced in all sorts of sins: "The rumors about John are the days and the eve of the riches of Christ and the Epiphany: the men and women and girls are converging on the night lapping and the impolite dialect and demonic songs and dancing and leaping and God-making" Writes Stoglav. So, we learn that Rusali are celebrated twice a year - in summer and in winter. "John's days" is Ivan Kupala, "the eve of the riches of Christ" - Christmas (It's funny that even now, millennia later, we celebrate them as stormily!) But in this and in another case, Rusalalia is not a single holiday, but a whole A cycle of rituals, a period with a single name - Green Christmas Day and Winter Christmas Day. Winter cycle: Varvara and Nikola the Winter, New Year, Christmas, Vasil and Malanka, Baptism, Vlasius - preserved better and almost completely resurrected in our days. The green cycle is almost forgotten, except for the day of Ivan Kupala. The more incredible and incontrovertible fact ... every year when someone scolds winter or May holidays - this period of universal joyless idleness, I think that Rusaliians seem to be sewn into our genetic code - long ago forgetting their name and the agrarian cycle with which they are connected This magic of our ancestors, we stubbornly walk (with small breaks to work) in winter and spring and summer, successfully inventing all the new occasions, from the May holidays on May 9-9 to the Day of Kiev! (And the best proof of this is the fact that in Kiev it was always celebrated on May 1, - no matter how it was called, the day of work, the student's day or the May "Sabbat" in the Shulyavsky Grove). Why these days? And in the winter and in the period of the spring Rusaly our ancestors had no hard work. In the first case, the harvest has already been harvested, in the second already sown. And there comes a period of agrarian magic, when you spit on the future harvest and its increase, which is what all the rituals of the saints are directed at. Or you cause rain with ritual songs and dances. The last days of sowing were considered the holiday of Boris and Gleb, the first harvest was started only after Petrovka. What was left to do in the gap? Walking, having fun and praying, so that the crops have risen ... What was necessary for this? Good sun and regular watering! Rusali therefore were called Rusalia - mermaids were responsible for watering and shoots of sprouts. And to walk, have fun and pray was once, imagine, with words-synonyms. The fun was associated with a lot of water and fire - magical rituals!.

At the well It is believed that the primordial pre-Christian Rusalia was descended from the Roman Rosary, the festival of flowering roses. Voropai noted that in Ukraine Rusalalia officially starts only when blooms begin to blossom. It is in the veins of Ukrainian beliefs and live mermaids. It is in zhito - even in our time rural grandmothers do not let small children. With the beginning of flowering, the earth opens and out of it come the souls of ancestors - in the form of mermaids-forks. The spring Mermaids begin with the first May flowering, end before collecting the first fruits - and imply a period of all sorts of sorcery for harvesting - from the calls of ancestral assistants to the marriage ritual of copulation to Kupala. Therefore, it is very characteristic for this period, the belief that on the Rusalia mermaids lure guys to ... have sex with them! As well as the faith of the girls, that in exchange for a gift, the mermaid will help to charm the guy who has attracted attention! The first goal of all rusal rituals-prayers was to challenge the rain. As important for the future harvest crop, from May to June, even the modern summer residents know. Even better knew our ancestors! "In 1145 ... because of terrible droughts in the spring and downpours in the summer and autumn" all sorts of disasters came to Kievan Rus. "At the end of the reign of Vsevolod Yaroslavich (mind. In 1093 g. ) The Dnieper has been affected by droughts, from which forests and swamps have lit up, and behind them are unchanged consequences: famine and sea, t. , In all likelihood, typhus, so ferocious, that in one Kiev, in the time "from Filippov's day (November 14) to the meat conspiracy" was sold seven thousand coffins ... "(Amphitheatres) Drought in the spring - meant guaranteed hunger and death in winter. Therefore, in May-June, it was so necessary to call the vital water from heaven! Therefore, for the sake of summoning the rain, they were ready to sing and dance to the point of falling, and conclude contracts with mermaids, and drown the local witches (footnote http: // www. Segodnya.

Ua / opinion / ladaluzinacolumn / oblivannyy-ponedelnik-pamyat-o-drevnem-obryade-utopleniya-vedmy-1013441. Html) So at the end of Rusalia, after Kupala and Petrovka, when it was time to harvest - mermaids arranged ritual send-offs, banished them from homes and villages. After all, summer showers (capable of destroying a ripening harvest) were as destructive as the spring drought. From the "ABC of Kyiv Miracles".

Original article: Why should we celebrate May holidays?.