Kumlenie is an East Slavic (most of European Russia, Northeastern Ukraine and Eastern Belarus) custom during Pentecost performed mostly by young unmarried women, but in some cases also between men and women (in Gomel, Belarus) or only between men.
A wreath out of birch branches was made and through it the participants, in pairs, groups of four, or all together, would kiss and exchange gifts such as crosses, clothes, scarves, wreaths, rings, beads, eggs and cakes. In this way they would become “godmothers” to each other.
Kumlenie was accompanied by an oath: the girls kissed a cross that hung in a curled wreath. In the Nizhny Novgorod region, the girls hanged an egg in a wreath and kissed it on both sides. They danced a horovod around a birch tree. Тhe ritual would end with a feast, with obligatory fried eggs, and often with fortune-telling with wreaths at the river.
In the southern parts of Russia kumlenie was accompanied by a custom called Baptism/funeral of the cuckoo.
The bonded alliance was short-lived and was torn in a week or a half (on the Trinity, in Peter’s camp, etc.) by the so-called raskumlivanie, consisting in actions opposite to those that took place at the making of the union - the girls stepped over the wreath in the opposite direction, returned objects taken from each other, pronounced sentences or sang songs indicating the severance of ties: “Let us regain ourselves, godmother …”. Yet sometimes the union turned out to be longer - six weeks, a year or all life.
