St. Matthew’s Day (Folkloric Date) Spring Magic
Today is St. Matthew’s Day and my spiritual birthday —the date that marks the beginning of my ritual year. This year’s rituals were bittersweet with the knowledge of our imminent departure from the land I’ve worked with for the last decade.
Heading down to the creek to drown Morana/Smrtka and hold a bird wedding
Drowning Morana/Smrtka 2026
Bird wedding
In folk tradition, Saint Matthew was associated with the arrival of early spring. In the Chod region and South Moravia, it was said that sparrows had a wedding on this day.
To bring the spring proactively, Russian mothers baked bird-shaped pastries in early March and their children clambered about setting these little larks and snipes out like duck decoys on the rooftops, fence posts, and snowless patches of ground, hanging them from trees and bushes or even tossing them into the air, meanwhile singing such songs as:
“Even before the leaves bud out, as the snow begins to thaw, one must invite–indeed coax–the spring to arrive. If one simply waited, Spring (being willful) might not choose to come, and then, with last year’s food bins already almost empty, one could not survive.” —Elizabeth Wayland Barber, The Dancing Goddesses
In more recent centuries these bird buns are made at Easter in the Czech Republic. However I like to wed and then release them after drowning Morana to invoke Spring. I also shake the trees to wake them. Another St. Matthew’s Day tradition.
Releasing and offering the birdies to the fruit and berry shrubs I worked with and/or foraged from this year: birch, mimosa, sumac, cherry, white walnut, trifoliate orange, beautyberry, and American Persimmon
As the sun set I returned to the house and veiled this year’s Morana/Smrtka doll