New Year, Slavic New Year (14/09)

New Year, or Slavic New Year, falls on September 14 (September 1, old style). This date in the Orthodox calendar is also considered the first day of the new church year — The beginning of the indict.

In Rus', this day was a big holiday with many traditions and beliefs. In connection with the onset of autumn and the new year, many works in the field were completed and sit-ins began, that is, work in huts during fire. By the way, the night before they extinguished the old fire in the house, and early in the morning they lit «new» with special sentences.

On this day, it was customary to go around all the fields with special songs and calls so that next year the harvest would be good, and also move to new houses and celebrate housewarming. Also, by this day it was necessary to complete all trade and economic agreements and transactions, pay tribute, taxes and duties.

Another tradition of the holiday was the rituals of « tonsure» — initiation into the army and peasantry of children who had reached the age of 3–4 years. And all this was accompanied by songs, festivities and pyramids.

By the way, according to astronomers, the day of New Year celebrations can be absolutely any date, since the concept of «the beginning of the year» is very conditional. After all, all points of the earth’s orbit are absolutely equal, and it makes absolutely no difference which of them is taken as the starting point.



Story «Time for change»

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