Baltic festivals
Pusiaužiemis January 25th
Mid-Winter Festival. In certain parts of Lithuania, Kirmeline (Day of Serpents) is celebrated instead. Kirmeline is the symbolic awakening of the snakes. Food and milk is put out for the snakes – if they eat and drink, a good year is foretold.
Perkūnas Day February 2
Gabija Day February 5
Užgavenes March 1st
Escort of Winter essentially waits for Spring and helps prepare for the new season. The holiday consists of processions, costumes, tomfoolery, games, and plays. The main parts are: receiving guests with treats; rides and races; processing the More statue and then destroying her by fire; plays with people costumed as animals, strangers and mythological beings; performing the war of Winter with Spring symbolized by the Lasininis (the bacon-being) with the Kanapinis (the hemp-being); portraying weddings or funerals; spraying people with water; fortune-telling.
Velykos Spring Equinox
Christianity incorporated Lithuanian Equinox traditions into Easter, and replaced the ancient Lithuanian name for the Equinox with the Slavic word 'Velykos', i.e. Easter. 'Pavasario lyge', meaning Spring Equinox, remains the only non-Christian name for the holiday. The week before Equinox, called the Velykos of Veles (souls), concludes the annual cycle of commemorations of the dead. As during Kucios (Winter Solstice Eve), families remember their dead and leave their dinners on the tables overnight for the veles to eat.
Jorė Spring Festival
Samborai Spring Festival
Sambariai, which names the ritual meal at the conclusion of sowing, or Paruges, which means the day by the rye. Households gathered on their fields with food and drink, where an open-air ritual meal was held. Households held the ritual separately; it was not a community rite. The ritual included ancient sacred songs called dainos and ancient ritual rounds or sutartines that blessed the grains. Families would prepare for Sambariai by stocking up on food, especially meats, and by brewing a special beer (traditional ritual drink and libation beverage). If the ritual were held at home, the house would be decorated with fresh-cut birch branches. Occurs at the end of May, after the planting of rye and other grains is finished and the seed has grown. This tradition survived undisturbed until the beginning of the 20th century in parts of Lithuania. Sambariai also once marked the start of the swimming season.
Rasa Summer Solstice
Order of celebration: (1) dancing around the gates, (2) dancing around the kupolas, (3) misc., games, predictions, circle dance, (4) vaises (ritual meal), (5) greeting the setting sun, (6) lighting the bonfires and offerings, (7) visiting and blessing the fields and trees, (8) principal bonfire, burning of the More (straw doll symbolizing the old), circle dances around the bonfire, (9) swimming and bathing, a boat with a bonfire sails to shore, symbolizing the nocturnal trip of the sun, (10) casting the wreaths (11) greeting the moon and the stars, (12) worship of the rising sun and bathing in the morning dew.
Žolines August 15
In honour of Žemyna, Earth Goddess. Associated with Rugiu Svente.
Rugių Svente Rye Harvest
Beginning with the end of July and throughout August -- depending on the growing conditions each year -- the Lithuanian countryside starts to harvest the rye, the single most important grain cultivated in Lithuania. Rye is a divine grain; its fields are sacred. The harvest begins with the ritual Festival of the Rye, which expresses thanksgiving for the harvest. Women and men wear their finest white linen for the ritual, and harvest the rye in these clothes.
Dagotuves Winter Rye Planting Finished
Velines All of October
Velines is in honour of the Veles, the shade of the ancestors – either of the family or the village. Because families would live in the same house/village for centuries, Lithuanians came to believe that the veles acted as guardians for the family and for the village. This is when the veles would enter the family home for the rest of the winter – leave at Velykos to go into the fields, to encourage the fertility of the land.
Kučios/Kaledos Winter Solstice Eve – Beginning of the Year
Marks the end of the year, when the world returns to darkness and non-existence. However, as death begets birth, the two holidays also herald the rebirth of nature and the return of the sun. The Lithuanians distinguish the two subsequent days, now celebrated on the 24th and 25th of December, with a variety of ritual customs.
Further reading
Michael Strmiska (2005), "The Music of the Past in Modern Baltic Paganism." Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 8: 3 pp 39-58
Michael Strmiska, editor (2005) Modern Paganism in World Cultures. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2005. - Volume of essays about modern Pagan religious movements in America, Canada, the UK and Europe.
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