Holidays of the Slavs - Magpies, Zhavoronki

Larks, Sandpipers, Magpies, and also Grouse Day - a holiday of the revival of nature on March 22. It would seem that all the names are associated with birds, but Magpies are not white-sided beauties, but forty Sebastian martyrs who did not renounce Christ under Roman torture. In Orthodoxy, it is a highly revered holiday that falls during Lent. And now about the coincidences: forty martyrs, forty species of birds fly from the south on this day, after forty days of absence, the Pleiades appear in the sky - a sacred constellation among the Slavs, the abode of the souls of their ancestors. Were there exactly forty martyrs? Perhaps more than forty species of birds are returning? What comes first: folk observations of space or biblical stories? There is hardly a certain answer. The traditions on the Day of the Larks are wonderful, so in any case the holiday will be preserved in people's memory. On this day, the souls of ancestors incarnate into birds and flock in flocks to their descendants. Women bake lark buns and distribute them to children. The kids, having planted them on poles, rush around the area, call for spring, then eat them, sparing the bird’s head. They bring it to their mothers and sing: The men selected cookies from the platter. The one who received the baked coin was the first to throw a grain of grain on the sown arable land. The girls called on spring with spring songs, gathering on the green hills. If a woman tore 40 thread strands in Soroka, broke 40 splinters, then she destroyed the icy bonds that bound nature in the winter cold. Along with the arrival of warmth, the day lengthened, and 40 types of evil fevers, defeated by the sun, disappeared. The Pleiades constellation lit up again in the night sky, signifying the triumph of the forces of light over evil spirits. It was customary to remember the dead. Folk holidays are based on natural phenomena and centuries-old observations of them. The days of the spring equinox are the line between the seasons. The transition to warmth is associated not only with the emergence of new life, but also with the tension of the forces of all things on earth. To successfully enter the next cycle, it is necessary to cleanse yourself from everything that pulls you back: to break the shackles of winter, to expel 40 infirmities. Now it’s time to meet the messengers of nature’s revival and welcome winged friends into the courtyards.