Feast of Trinity: history, traditions, symbols
Modern people, despite the fact that they wholeheartedly believe in God, rarely observe all the traditions and commandments. But there are great holidays and days that are never forgotten and honored in every Christian family. One of these holidays is the day of the Holy Trinity.
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What date is the Trinity celebrated
Trinity is one of the most important holidays of the Christian church. It follows after Great Easter: exactly 7 Sundays, on the 50th day, closely intertwining folk customs and church traditions.
Considering that Easter is a rolling holiday - it does not have a specific date, the feast of the Holy Trinity is also celebrated on different days every year.
Easter is preceded by the strictest fast of the year - 7 weeks, which begins after the wide Maslenitsa and even covers the day of the vernal equinox. Therefore, the easiest way is determine the date of Easter, and after it the date of the Holy Trinity, you can use a tear-off calendar, where the phases of the moon are usually indicated.
- Find the day of the vernal equinox.
- Determine the date of the full moon just after the vernal equinox.
- Mark the Sunday closest to the full moon - this will be the day of Great Easter.
- Count 49 days after Easter.
- On the 50th day - Sunday - Trinity is celebrated.
Feast of the Trinity in 2016
This year holiday of great Easter celebrated on May 1, right on the day of spring and labor. Having counted the allotted 7 weeks, it will not be difficult to find out that Trinity in 2016 will come on Sunday, June 19.
history of the holiday
The Trinity is also often called Pentecost. And not at all because it is celebrated 49 days after Great Easter. In fact, Pentecost was celebrated long before Christianity began. It was on the fiftieth day after Passover (Jewish Passover) that Moses received the ten commandments from the Lord, which later became the basis for the Old Testament.
And many years later, just on the fiftieth day after the Resurrection of Christ, the incorporeal, living Holy Spirit descended on the Mother of God and the 12 apostles - this is how God appeared to them in his third guise (before that, God had twice appeared to them in the form of God the Father (Divine Uma) and God the Son (the Divine Word)). So this day was marked by the day of the Holy Trinity.
The Zion chamber in Jerusalem, where this action took place, according to the Bible, became the first Christian church in the world, and the day of the Holy Trinity went down in history as the appearance of the New Testament Church on Earth.
This is the main version of the origin of the holiday of the Trinity, although, admittedly, not the only one. There are many legends, according to one of which the Trinity is the day on which the Lord created the earth and greenery, according to the other, on this day Jesus walked with Peter and Paul in the shade of green trees and Christ blessed this day and called the Trinity. Of course, these speculations have a right to exist, but still they are not as common as the events described in the Bible.
Now the feast of the Holy Trinity is celebrated in all Christian churches, but among Catholics and Protestants it is a little later: on the 50th day after Easter, they celebrate Pentecost, and Trinity is celebrated the next Sunday.
The essence of the feast of the Trinity
From ancient times to the present day, people have been celebrating the holiday of the Trinity with the hope of a new beginning, a fruitful and auspicious year for all living things and, first of all, for their families.
If we meet spring when we see off the winter on Shrovetide, then Trinity is a full-fledged beginning of summer. Usually, by the Trinity, all the trees in the forest are already blooming, grass grows and really warm days begin.
Perhaps that is why it has been established since ancient times that the Trinity is a rolling holiday and does not have exact dates.
Traditions and customs of the feast of the Trinity
By the holiday of the Holy Trinity, spring finally comes into its own: everything around is filled with new life and light, blossoms and comes to life. As a sign of the renewal of all living things, temples and churches on this day are also buried in fresh greenery: the floor is covered with soft grass, the walls are decorated with young shoots of birch, and the priests themselves walk in green robes.
But it is not only in churches that light and spring can penetrate! The hostesses on the eve of the Trinity put their house in perfect order, decorate the rooms with fresh flowers, symbolizing how the soul of a person who has let God into his heart opens and blossoms.
From the very morning, Christians rush to church, to thank God for the fact that he is always with them and protects them from troubles and misfortunes. From the church, every believer must return home with a thin branch of a young birch tree, which symbolizes the beginning of all living, bright, new good life.
All relatives and friends are invited to the house, they set the table, prepare a good treat. According to tradition, there must be a freshly baked loaf on the table and the same twig from the temple, as a sign of prosperity and a happy life for everyone present.
Symbols of the feast of the Trinity
In churches, it is not for nothing that sprigs of Russian birch are taken for decoration. Birch is one of the first to be covered with young leaves and is the most "elegant" in the forest. All over the world, it is believed that the Russian birch has a special growth force, so people have known for a long time that in the forest it is imperative to hug a birch and ask her for strength and health.
In ancient times, in the evening on Trinity, young girls put on their most beautiful dresses, wreaths of birch branches with wildflowers and went to "curl" a birch: the youngest of them cut down a young tree and the girls together decorated it with ribbons and flowers, danced and danced around him. After that, the birch tree had to be drowned in the river in order for the land to be rich and fertile.
Divination on the Trinity
It is interesting that Trinity, Pentecost coincides with another great pagan holiday, which our ancestors did not forget from ancient times: the veneration of the arrival of summer - Green weeks (Green Christmastide, Rusalniy week). The end of such a week - Sunday - was especially awaited by still very young girls, tk. older girls took them with them on walks, where they often wondered about the betrothed.
Of course, the official church does not approve of this to this day, but, nevertheless, the traditions of this holiday come to us from ancient times.
They believed that these days mermaids go ashore, play, swing on branches and watch people, and on Trinity, on Sunday, they are especially active. Therefore, on Rusalnaya week, you cannot walk alone in the forest or near the water - it is believed that mermaids can easily drag a person to their place for fun. Of course, in our time no one does laundry in ponds, but still, our ancestors are not always wrong.
Be sure to commemorate the dead, especially those who died ahead of time: according to legend, in the Green Week they return to earth in the form of mythological creatures. Wells and fields were consecrated.
And those who were fond of guessing about their future on Trinity had a place to roam, but the most common fortune-telling were those where a birch tree was used.
- They plucked a random young birch twig and examined it carefully: if the branch is even, without flaws, then the year will be even and quiet. And if it was a curve, then they were expecting changes, good or bad - they judged by the bark of this branch: whether it was beautiful or sick.
- Several young branches of different trees were lowered into the water, made a wish and pulled out with closed eyes, whoever gets it: birch - it will come true, aspen - this year you don't need to wait, oak - you need to work hard to make your wish come true, and pine - it all depends only from you.
