This holiday among the Slavic peoples was associated with their favorite summer pastime — swimming. Everything related to water, bath and bathing was reflected on this day. In addition, he was celebrated on the eve of the day of Ivan Kupala. And in Orthodoxy on this day they honor the memory of St. Agrippina of Rome, nicknamed Agrahen.
Throughout the north of Russia, and especially in the Vologda province, peasants harvested bath brooms for a whole year on this day. For this, women and girls harnessed their horses after lunch and went to the forest to break young birch branches. Sometimes brooms were made from various species of deciduous trees and plants, then each broom was in the branch: from birch, alder, turmoil, willow, linden, currants, calves, mountain ash and other plants.
These are ritual brooms: one of them was used on this day in a bathhouse, others were surrounded by recently-faced cows, the third threw bans over their heads or threw baths on the roofs in order to find out the future ( if the broom falls to the top of the weather, then the thrower will die, and if not the peak, then he will remain alive ).
Acrafren must have washed and soared in baths, using various medicinal herbs to heal from diseases. They watered in a broom from the Mother of God and the fern, Ivan da Mariah and daisies, from the butter and wormwood, pea pea pea.
On the holiday, a vow porridge was made, a crease, for the poor. In the Vologda province on the day of St. Agraena, tables with lean dishes were set for the poor fraternity among the village. Sometimes people under 300 gathered beggars, and they all ate at the expense of the village.
Like Ivan Travnik, on the day of the Tupalnitsa, desperate men and women took off their shirts to the deaf midnight and dug roots or searched for treasured treasures in the treasured places. And the healers, going to bed, read improvised prayers.
The custom found in a number of regions is also very original. On the day of Agraena Kupalnitsa, all the girls, adults and adolescents, went home in their best outfits and asked: « Wash ». Translated into plain language, this means — give something from girlish jewelry: earrings, ribbons, beads and more.