#whitsuntide

[adambarrettz]

[dvoeverie-stitches]

Whitsun Eve (June 7th this year) in Czechia

On the Saturday before the "Whitsun" (popularly "green") holidays, housewives cleaned the house and decorated it inside and out with green linden branches and flowers. Green branches were pushed behind the windows and in the room, the so-called "holy corner" was decorated, a corner of the living room with holy pictures and a crucifix (a symbol of the crucified Jesus Christ with his body), so that the Holy Spirit (when he comes to the dwelling in the form of a dove) would have a place to rest on Sunday. There was usually a table there and a wooden dove (a symbol of the Holy Spirit) hung above it. On Say turday evening, the crack of whips, the shooting of rifles and pistols, and the jingling of keys could also be heard throughout the village. The noise served as a magical means against "dark forces" and was also supposed to resemble the roar of a whirlwind with tongues of fire that accompanied the coming of the Holy Spirit.

Source:

Letnice – Wikipedie

Letnice – Wikipedie

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The color of Pentecost is red, the color of fire and grace. This color has a deep symbolic meaning during the Whitsun holidays.

The symbol of the Holy Spirit is a white dove.

Pentecost was an extremely important holiday for our ancestors and is one of the most important holidays today. Just as we celebrate winter with Christmas and spring with Easter, so we celebrate Summer with Pentecost.

The Saturday before Pentecost is filled with a spirit of great cleaning and decorating.

It starts early in the morning to get everything done.

The housekeeper and her girls scrub the floors, clean and polish the furniture, blow away cobwebs and dust. Everything is washed, shined and tidied up, even the dishes must not be in the sink, but must be nicely washed and tidied up.

The clothes are washed, starched, ironed and put away in the closets, and the most festive holiday clothes or the most famous Sunday costumes are also prepared. The color red must not be missing from the clothing, be it in the form of ribbons, belts, brooches or other accessories.

In the meantime, the boys and the farmer clean up and tidy the garden and fences, barn, workshops, sheds, garage, and any outbuildings. When they are finished, they go to the forest with respect and gratitude to collect beautifully green beech, linden, or birch branches.

The housewife takes out the holiday blankets and tablecloths, puts pure white curtains on the windows. The girls pull out red and in some regions also white ribbons and go to the doorstep to receive twigs from the boys. Where the little ones have not yet grown into independence, this task is taken over by the housewife and the farmer.

On the doorstep, girls create decorations for the room from the twigs, which they tie together and decorate with red ribbons. This decoration takes many forms from region to region. Most often, it is one large vase on the dining table full of twigs with ribbons. In some regions, this large vase was then complemented by other smaller vases or cups with smaller twigs, placed around the house.

However, the large vase with branches is the most important, it is placed in the building so that the Holy Spirit can settle in our house on Sunday.

Twigs are stuck in and placed in windows.

It is also important to decorate the outside of the house with twigs, so that the house is beautiful and so that the Holy Spirit knows where they are caught. We stick larger twigs around the house and also stick them somewhere near the gate. These are also decorated with ribbons and to make them last longer, we can put them in a container with water.

When we live in an apartment, we put a branch on the balcony or outside the window, or in the window. We put a decorated branch on the fence near the house.

We also decorate the holy picture with flowers and green twigs. Our grandmothers most often had it in the living room in a corner above the table. We can still see these holy corners in old log cabins in open-air museums or in traditional buildings.

In Moravia, housewives put a lot of effort into decorating their homes, and in addition to ribbons, paper decorations, paper roses and flowers are still used there today.

Since every village has its own chapel or a simple altar or cross, these also need to be decorated with flowers and green branches. The local parish usually takes care of this, but we can also take on this task.

Altars in churches are richly decorated with flowers, especially roses, which probably gave rise to another name for this period – Rosalie. The decoration with roses used to depend on whether Pentecost was early or late and whether the roses were already in bloom.

The outside of the church is decorated with green beech, birch or linden branches.

Source:

Letnice je tradiční název pro Boží hod Svatodušní. Sestoupení Ducha svatého na zem se slaví vždy sedmou neděli - 50 dní po Velikonočním pond

[sunspilling]

[zvetenze]

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.

[electronicsquid]

Off to a youth rally in Vienna

(Walter Sanders. 1951)

[govpubsfinds]

“Whitsunday, a Christian holiday, seems at first a strange date for a communist rally, but the Soviets knew what they were about.  In Germany, Whitsuntide is a traditional spring festival. Young people go into the woods for beech twigs and branches to decorate their hats and bicycles. Farm wagons are decked out in bunting and greenery.This is the time for youth, song, and the freshness of new life.  The Christian religion, when it spread among the European tribes, took over their heathen festivals and worked them into our Christmas and Easter customs. The Soviets set out to take over the Christian festival of Whitsuntide in the same way.” (p. 18)

United States. Department of State. Division of Publications. (1951). Confuse and control : Soviet techniques in Germany. (Department of State publication ; 4107). Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. 

[andwiththyspirit]

An Order for Compline

Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace. — Antiphon on the Nunc Dimittis

[andwiththyspirit]

An Order for Compline

Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.

— Antiphon on the Nunc Dimittis