It so happened that many Christian Orthodox holidays were superimposed on more ancient pagan ones. This was done so that people better and faster get used to the new religion, adapt to changing requirements and living conditions. An example of such celebrations is the history of myrrh-bearing women.
Celebration date
The celebration of myrrh-bearing women is a special event in Christianity. He does not have a specific date - it depends on what number Easter falls on in a given year. Celebration is celebrated on the third post-Easter Sunday, on the 15th day after the bright day of Christ. If Easter is early, then the festival of myrrh-bearing women occurs at the end of March or the first half of April. At a later time, the Church celebrates it at the end of April or in May. Not only Sunday itself, but the whole week after it is considered festive. Among believers these days, it is customary to congratulate mothers, sisters, grandmothers, aunts, daughters, spouses. After all, the feast of myrrh-bearing women is considered in Christianity to be a female triumph.
Two mary
The names of those in whose person the Orthodox Church honors the female half of humanity have come down to us. These are two Marys - one is the well-known Magdalene, a former sinner who repented of her profligacy and accepted Christ's covenants as the main and necessary for life. The second is Kleopova. According to various sources, she was either the sister of the mother of Christ, or the wife of the brother of St. Joseph the Betrothed - the husband of the mother of Jesus. Third biblical texts speak of her as the parent of the relatives of the Son of God - James, Josiah, Simon, and Judah. The celebration of myrrh-bearing women in memory of John, the faithful disciple of Christ, is also celebrated. She walked with his other listeners in Galilee and secretly buried the head of John the Baptist when Herod killed him.
Mother of the Apostles and Sisters of Lazarus
Salomia also earned a high honor in church memory. She is the mother of the disciples and apostles of Jesus, James and John. Christ was the first after Magdalen at her resurrection. In various Gospels, Martha’s sisters are also mentioned with Mary from Bethany — the Savior honored them with his presence and sermons. But they believed in Him after their brother Lazarus was resurrected by Christ. And, of course, Susanna, about whom the Evangelist Luke speaks, she served the Son of God “from her possessions”. Thanks to these personalities, to this day, to this day, pious and righteous Christian women have received congratulations on the feast of myrrh-bearing women.
About event
Many who do not know the history of the holiday may wonder: why are wives called myrrh bearers? How to understand this expression? We find the answers in the Bible, in the New Testament. They are residents of the places where Jesus went and preached. With joy and hospitality they welcomed Christ in their homes, received Him as their personal savior, served Him and followed Him. When Jesus was crucified, these women were witnesses of His suffering at Calvary. And the morning after the execution, when the bodies of the crucified were removed from the crosses and buried, they came to the tomb of Jesus to anoint His body with peace, as was required by Jewish customs. Hence the name of the celebration. Congratulations on the holiday of myrrh-bearing women are also associated with the joyful news of the resurrection of Christ that these women brought to other people. After all, it was to them that Jesus appeared after death on the cross. They were the first to learn the truth about the salvation and immortality of the soul from a meek angel who pointed them to an open empty crypt.
Spiritual and moral ties
Myrrh-bearing women were especially revered in Russia. This is due to the element of piety in Russian culture and spirituality. Morality and morality, strict standards and requirements of Orthodoxy entered the flesh and blood of the people, especially its female part. Simple peasant women, pillar noble women, representatives of the merchant and petty bourgeois class tried to lead a righteous and honest life, in fear of God. Good deeds, donations to the needy, giving alms to the poor and merciful deeds for the afflicted - all this was done by them with a special spiritual uplift and a desire to please the Lord. What is still characteristic of Russian Orthodoxy is an extremely chaste attitude to the sacrament of marriage. Fidelity to this word, the oath before the altar (that is, those covenants that Christ bequeathed) in antiquity was a hallmark of a Russian woman. These ideals live among the people now. Myrrh-bearing women were distinguished by meekness, humility, patience, and forgiveness. Therefore, they became a role model. And the Russian land gave Christianity a lot of saints and righteous, blessed and martyrs, who did good for the glory of Christ. Mother Matrona, Ksenia of Petersburg, Fevronia of Murom, Abbess Catherine and many others are revered among the people as intercessors, helpers, comforters, healers, true followers of the work of Christ.
Orthodox International Women's Day
The Orthodox holiday of myrrh-bearing women is not in vain considered international. It is joyfully celebrated in many countries of the world. And this is not surprising. After all, a woman gives birth to a new life, brings to the world the ideas of goodness and love, is the guardian of the hearth, a support to her husband and children. In fact, who are the myrrh-bearing women? Ordinary mothers, sisters, spouses, only living according to the commandments of God. The most striking and significant personification of the sacrificial feminine principle, love and forgiveness is undoubtedly the Mother of God. But other holy righteous people also deserve universal reverence and glorification. That is why the beautiful half of humanity has two solemn events. This is March 8 and the feast of the holy myrrh-bearing women.
Old Slavic roots
As already mentioned, many Christian significant dates were combined in religious practice and popular consciousness with earlier rites and rituals of paganism. Priests do not always agree with this statement, but ethnographic studies prove the validity of such conjectures. It concerns Christmas Christmass, Ivano-Kupala night gatherings and many other magical days. This happened with the holiday of myrrh-bearing women. Among the Slavs, it coincided with the end of youth festivities on Radunitsa. Often, on the third post-Easter Sunday, in many places of present-day Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, a rite of initiation or cumulation was performed.
Babysitting
The action was associated with ancient
village magic, magic and new then Christian symbols. For the ceremony, a “Trinity tree” was chosen - a young birch in a forest glade or a large branch of maple, which was brought into the hut. The tree was decorated with ribbons, wreaths of wildflowers. Nodules with colored eggs and / or crosses were hung in wreaths. Women and girls gathered around a birch tree and “crowded”: they kissed each other cross-wise and exchanged crosses and dyes through wreaths. The rings and the monist were given, earrings and beads, scarves and ribbons. The essence of the holiday was this: that the women of the village or villages became friendly. In addition, round dances were performed around the birch, sang songs and always treated themselves. Unmarried girls were guessing at a “friend of the heart”, and family - about their future life. The main dish was scrambled eggs, which was called "Indian". In general, when the feast of the wife of the myrrh-bearing woman was coming, they also said about it: "babi."
Other names of the holiday and its connection with Christianity
This day the people had many names. The main definition in them indicated precisely the feminine. They clicked him like that: “Babyskaya Yashnya”, “Babyskaya bratchina”, “Babyskaya week”, “Kumitny” or “Curling” Sunday (from “curling” birches - weaving its branches in the form of an arch and braiding braids). What is interesting: practically in no Russian province there was a single rules for celebrations. In Pskov or Smolensk, Kostroma and Nizhny Novgorod, as well as in others, the “Indian Sunday”, or the celebration of myrrh-bearing women was celebrated in its own way. The scenario is different everywhere. The only thing that united them was that on the eve of the woman they went home, gathered bread, pastries, eggs, and other products for a common feast. On a holiday, unmarried girls were obligatory, their older relatives first went to church to defend the mass. After they ordered a general prayer service for the entire female part of the village. They paid for it not with money, but with eggs, which was also part of the ritual of the Myrrh-bearing week. And already in the evening, the actual celebrations began: with dances and songs and other holiday attributes. And then a feast followed. In the regions where flax was grown, for a rich harvest, scrambled eggs were often eaten under a special plot.
Funeral motives
Among the days of the Myrrh-bearing week, time was always allocated for the commemoration of the dead. For these purposes, a common magpie was served in each parish - secular, according to the deceased members of the church. On Parental Saturday, under Mironositsky Sunday, cemeteries were visited in many settlements and paints were left on the graves. In this tradition, the echoes of pagan cults, in particular the cult of ancestors, are also clearly audible. The deification of nature, the change of the seasons, and also the onset of the agricultural season played a role in the emergence of the holiday.
Mironositsky days today
The Orthodox women's holiday is celebrated today in all Christian parishes of Russia and beyond. In Sunday schools at churches, teachers prepare a concert with children for mothers, grandmothers, and sisters. In songs, poems, scenes played out on scripture plots, they glorify not only the biblical heroines, saints, but also just all women - continuers of the human race, the embodiment of peace, kindness, love. While workshops work at Sunday schools, mentors and students prepare small gifts for guests. These are, as a rule, frames and shelves for icons, wooden painted or scorched eggs, pouches for prosphurs and other beautiful and useful objects, as well as thematic drawings and applications. Organized with a soul, such holidays leave a deep mark in the heart and have great educational and moral significance.
Temple celebrations
In all Orthodox churches, churches and cathedrals these days, solemn services are held. Pilgrims gather from all over the place of faith to feel their communion with the whole Church of Christ. Lay people attend services no less zealously than Orthodox believers. Within the walls of the houses of God, in the pious examples of clerics, in the wisdom of the Holy Scriptures, they seek and find a support that helps us survive in our difficult times and gives hope for the future. After the Divine Liturgy, the shepherds turn to the parishioners with the person of the Word - a heartfelt sermon in which they congratulate all women on a bright, joyous holiday.
The church respects and reveres not only the feat of biblical wives. Holy Fathers pay special attention in their Word to the glorified and little-known, modest toilers of the Faith. Everyone who works in the spiritual field, in the Christian field, performing a daily, sometimes imperceptible feat for the glory of God, is addressed with words of gratitude, wishes of the grace of the Lord, health and peace - in souls, in families, between people. In their sermons, shepherds emphasize that without women's participation, without the support of women, their painstaking work for the good of the Church, Christianity would not have been so widespread. In Russia, for example, in the era of godlessness, it was women who remained the stronghold of faith and unbending courage. Therefore, although they are called the weaker sex, their mission in Orthodoxy is significant. Parishioners should always remember this and remain the personification of spiritual purity, chastity, bearers of eternal Orthodox moral values. Women must fight for peace, and the example of myrrh-bearing women inspires them on this thorny path.