Trinity Holiday: history, traditions, symbols

Modern people, despite the fact that they believe in God with all their souls, 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.

What date is Trinity celebrated?

Trinity is one of the most important holidays of the Christian church. It follows after Great Easter: exactly 7 Sundays later, on the 50th day, closely intertwining folk customs and church traditions.

Considering that Easter is a moving holiday - it does not have a specific date, the Feast of the Holy Trinity is also celebrated on different days every year.

Great 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 spring equinox. Therefore, the easiest way is determine the date of Easter, followed by the date of the Holy Trinity, can be done using a tear-off calendar, where the phases of the moon are usually indicated.

1. Find the day of the vernal equinox.
2. Determine the date of the full moon immediately after the spring equinox.
3. Mark the Sunday closest to the full moon - this will be the day of Great Easter.
4. Count down 49 days after Easter.
5. On the 50th day, Sunday, Trinity is celebrated.

Trinity Day 2016

This year Great Easter holiday celebrated on May 1, right on the day of spring and labor. Having counted down the required 7 weeks, it will not be difficult to find out that Trinity in 2016 will occur 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 arose. It was on the fiftieth day after Pesach (Jewish Passover) that Moses received the Ten Commandments from the Lord, which later became the basis for the Old Testament.

And many years later, also 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 appearance (before that, God had already appeared to them twice in the form of God the Father (Divine Mind) and God the Son (Divine Word)). So this day was also celebrated as the day of the Holy Trinity.

The Zion Upper Room in Jerusalem, where this action took place, according to the Bible, became the world's first Christian church, 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 Trinity holiday, although, admittedly, it is not the only one. There are many legends, according to one of which Trinity is the day on which the Lord created the earth and greenery, according to another - on this day Jesus walked with Peter and Paul in the shade of green trees and Christ blessed this day and called it Trinity. Of course, these speculations have a right to exist, but still they are not as widespread as the events described in the Bible.

Now the holiday of the Holy Trinity is celebrated in all Christian churches, but for Catholics and Protestants it is a little later: on the 50th day after Easter they celebrate Pentecost, and the Trinity is celebrated the following Sunday.

The essence of the Trinity holiday

From ancient times to the present day, people celebrate the Trinity holiday with the hope of a new beginning, a fruitful and favorable year for all living things and, first of all, for their family.

If, by welcoming winter at Maslenitsa, we welcome spring, then Trinity is the full-fledged beginning of summer. Usually, by Trinity, all the trees in the forest have already blossomed, the grass has grown, and truly warm days have begun.

Perhaps this is why it has been established since ancient times that Trinity is a moving holiday and does not have exact dates.

Traditions and customs of the Trinity holiday

By the feast 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 birch shoots, and the priests themselves wear green clothes.

But it’s not only in churches that light and spring are allowed to penetrate! On the eve of Trinity, housewives put their home in perfect order, decorate the rooms with fresh flowers, symbolizing how the soul of a person who has allowed God into his heart blossoms and blossoms.

From the very morning, Christians rush to church to thank God for always being with them and protecting them from troubles and misfortunes. Every believer always returns home from the temple with a thin branch of a young birch tree, which symbolizes the beginning of everything living, bright, and a new good life.

All relatives and friends are invited to the house, the table is set, and a good meal is prepared. According to tradition, there must be a freshly baked loaf and that same twig from the temple on the table, as a sign of prosperity and a happy life for all those present.

Symbols of the holiday of Trinity

It’s not for nothing that churches use Russian birch branches for decoration. Birch is one of the first to be covered with young leaves and stands the most “elegant” in the forest. All over the world it is believed that the Russian birch tree has a special growth power, so people have known since ancient times that in the forest they must hug the birch tree and ask it for strength and health.

In ancient times, on the evening of Trinity, young girls put on their most beautiful dresses, wreaths of birch branches with wildflowers and always went to “curl” the birch tree: the youngest of them cut down a young tree and the girls together decorated it with ribbons and flowers, danced in circles and danced around it. After this, the birch tree had to be drowned in the river so that the land would be rich and fertile.

Fortune telling for Trinity

It is interesting that Trinity and Pentecost coincide with another great pagan holiday, which our ancestors have not forgotten since ancient times: honoring the arrival of summer - Green Weeks (Green Christmastide, Rusal Week). The end of such a week - Sunday - was especially awaited by very young girls, because... Older girls took them with them to festivities, where they often told fortunes about their 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 on these days mermaids come ashore, play, swing on branches and watch people, and on Trinity Sunday, they are especially active. Therefore, during Mermaid Week you cannot walk through the forest or near the water alone - it is believed that mermaids can easily drag a person to them for fun. Of course, nowadays no one washes in ponds, but still our ancestors are not always wrong.

They always remembered the dead, especially those who died prematurely: according to legend, on Green Week they return to earth in the form of mythological creatures. Wells and fields were blessed.

And for those who liked to tell fortunes about their future on Trinity, there was plenty of room to roam, but the most common fortune-telling were those where birch was used.

• They picked a random young birch twig and examined it carefully: if the branch is straight, without flaws, then the year will be smooth and quiet. And if it was a curve, then they expected 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, they made a wish and, with their eyes closed, pulled out whichever one came their way: birch - it will come true, aspen - you don’t have to wait this year, oak - you need to work hard to make the wish come true, and pine - it all depends on you.