Agrafena Swimsuit (06/07)

This holiday among the Slavic peoples was associated with their favorite summer pastime, — bathing. Everything related to water, baths and swimming was reflected on this day. In addition, it was celebrated on the eve of Ivan Kupala Day. And in Orthodoxy on this day they honor the memory of Saint Agrippina of Rome, popularly nicknamed Agrafena.

Throughout the north of Russia, and especially in the Vologda province, peasants prepared bath brooms on this day for the whole year. To do this, women and girls harnessed their horses after lunch and went into the forest to break young birch branches. Sometimes brooms were made from various species of deciduous trees and plants, then each broom included a branch: from birch, alder, bird cherry, willow, linden, currant, viburnum, rowan and other plants.

These are ritual brooms: one of them was used on this day in a bathhouse, others were decorated with recently calved cows, others were thrown over their heads or thrown onto the roofs of the bathhouse in order to find out the future (if the broom falls with its apex to the churchyard, then the thrower will die, and if not the apex, then he will remain alive).

On Agrafena, they always washed and steamed in bathhouses, using various medicinal herbs to heal from diseases. They steamed with a broom made of Mother of God grass and fern, Ivan da Marya and chamomile, buttercup and wormwood, and fragrant mint.

For the holiday, a vow of porridge was made, folding, for the poor. In the Vologda province, on the day of St. Agrafena, tables with Lenten dishes were placed among the village for the poor brethren. Sometimes up to 300 people gathered beggars, and they all ate at the expense of the village.

Like Ivan Travnik, on the day of Agrafena Swimsuit, desperate men and women took off their shirts at midnight and until dawn dug roots or looked for treasuries in the treasured places. And the healers, going to bed, read homemade prayers.

The custom found in a number of regions is also very original. On Agrafena Swimsuit Day, all girls, adults and teenagers, wore their best outfits to their homes and asked: «Wash». Translated into regular language, this means — give me some of the girls' jewelry: earrings, ribbons, beads, etc.

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