Kupala Night (also Kupala's Night or just Kupala; Polish: , : , Russian: Ива́н Купа́ла: , Купала: , Ukrainian: Івана Купала: ) is one of the major folk holidays in some Slavic countries. It coincides with the Christian feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist and the East Slavic feast of Saint John's Eve. In folk tradition, it is revered as the day of the summer solstice and was originally celebrated on the shortest night of the year, which is either on 21-22Aleksander Gieysztor: Mitologia Słowian. Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2006. ISBN 978-83-235-0234-0, s. 244Native Polish Church https://rkp.org.pl/swieta or 23-24 of June in Czechia, Poland, Slovakia, Bulgaria (where it is called Enyovden). These dates were also adopted in Ukraine as of 2023.https://apostrophe.ua/ua/news/society/2023-06-08/novyiy-kalendar-ptsu-kogda-v-2023-godu-budem-otmechat-ivana-kupala-i-drugie-letnie-prazdniki/298591. Новий календар ПЦУ: коли в 2023 році відзначатимем Івана Купала та інші "літні" свята Following the Julian calendar, it is celebrated on the night between 6 and 7 July in Belarus, Russia, and parts of Ukraine. The name of the holiday is ultimately derived from the Proto-Slavic word *kǫpati, meaning "to bathe".
A number of activities and rituals are associated with Kupala Night, such as gathering herbs and flowers to decorate people, animals, and houses with; entering natural bodies of water and bathing or dousing oneself in it, as well as setting garlands on the water; lighting and jumping over fires; singing, dancing; and hunting witches and scaring them away. It was also believed that on this day the sun plays and other wonders of nature happen. The celebrations are held near the water, on the hills, surrounding that; chiefly, young men and women participate in these folkloric traditions. The rituals and symbolism of the holiday may point to its pre-Christian origins.
Names Old East Slavic: , Russian: , , , , dialectal: ; : "bonfire in the field"; Ukrainian: , , , , , , Polesia: , Belarusian: , dialectal: Polish dialects have retained loans from East Slavic languages:
Podlachia and Lublin: kupała, kąpała, kąpałeczka Podlachia, Lublin, Sieradz, Kalisz: kupalonecka, kopernacka, kopernocka, kupalnocka
Another Polish name for this major folk holiday is Sobótka.
In Old Czech (15th century), there is attested kupadlo "a multicolored thread with which gifts were tied, given on the occasion of Saint John's Eve; a gift given to boys by girls on the occasion of Saint John's Eve". In Slovakia, the folk kupadla "Saint John's Eve".
History and etymology
According to many researchers, Kupala Night is a Christianized Proto-Slavic or East Slavic celebration of the summer solstice. According to Nikolay Gal'kovskiy, "Kupala Night combined two elements: pagan and Christian." The viewpoint on the pre-Christian origin of the holiday is criticized by historian Vladimir Petrukhin and ethnographer Aleksandr Strakhov. Whereas, according to Andrzej Kempinski, "The apparent ambivalence (male-female, fire-wood, light-dark) seems to testify to the ancient origins of the holiday alleviating the contradictions of a dual society." According to Holobuts’ky and Karadobri, one of the arguments for the antiquity of the holiday is the production of fire by friction.
The name appears as early as the Old East Slavic language stage. Izmail Sreznevsky, in his Materials for the Dictionary of the Old East Slavic Language, gives the entries: "Saint John's Eve" (In Hypatian Codex under year 1262: Ипатьевская летопись.), "baptist" (no example), "St. John's Day" (). Epigraph No. 78 in The Cathedral of Holy Wisdom in Veliky Novgorod, dated to the late 11th - early 12th century, contains an inscription . According to ethnographer Vera Sokolova, Kupala is a later name that appeared among Eastern Slavs when the holiday coincided with the day of John the Baptist.
According to Max Vasmer, the name (Ivan) Kupala/Kupalo is a variant of the name (John the) Baptist ( ) and it calques the ancient Greek equivalent . Greek "baptist" derives from the verb "to immerse; to wash; to bathe; to baptize, consecrate, immerse in baptismal font", which in Old East Slavic was originally rendered by the word "to bathe", later displaced by "to baptise". The Proto-Slavic form of the verb is reconstructed as *kǫpati "to dip in water, to bathe".
According to Mel’nychuk, the word Kupalo itself may come from Proto-Slavic *kǫpadlo ( OCz. kupadlo, SCr. kùpalo, LSrb., USrb. kupadło "bathing place"), which is composed of the discussed verb *kǫpati and the suffix *-dlo. The name of the holiday is related to the fact that the first ceremonial bath was taken during Kupala Night, and the connection to John the Baptist is secondary.
Deity Kupala
From the 17th century, sources suggest that the holiday is dedicated to the deity Kupala, whom the Slavs supposedly worshipped. However, modern researchers deny the existence of such a deity.
Rituals and beliefs
On this day, June 24, it was customary to pray to John the Baptist for headaches and for children.
Kupala Night is filled with rituals related to water, fire and herbs. Most Kupala rituals take place at night. Bathing before sunset was considered mandatory: in the north, Russians were more likely to bathe in banyas, and in the south in rivers and lakes. Closer to sunset, on high ground or near rivers, bonfires were lit. Sometimes, fires were lit in the traditional way – by friction wood against wood. In some places in Belarus and Volyn Polissia, this archaic way of lighting a fire for the holiday survived until early 20th century.
According to Vera Sokolova, among the Eastern Slavs, the holiday has been preserved in its most "archaic" form by the Belarusians. In the center of the Kupala bonfire, Belarusians would place a pole on top of which a wheel was attached. Sometimes a horse's skull, called , was placed on top of the wheel and thrown into the fire, where it would burn, after which the youth would play, sing and dance around the fire. In Belarus, old, unwanted items were collected from backyards throughout the village and taken to a place chosen for the celebration (a glade, a high riverbank), where they were then burned. Ukrainians also preserved the main archaic elements, but changed their symbolic meanings in the 19th century. Russians either forgot the main elements of the Kupala ceremony or transferred them to other holidays (Trinity Day, Peter Day).
The celebration of Kupala Night is mentioned in the Hustyn Chronicle (17th century): This Kupala... is commemorated on the eve of the Nativity of John the Baptist... in the following manner: In the evening, ordinary children of both sexes gather and make wreaths of poisonous herbs or roots, and those covered with their clothes set fire, and then they put a green branch, and holding their hands they dance around the fire, singing their songs... Then they leap over the fire...
On Kupala Night, "bride and groom" were chosen and wedding ceremonies were conducted: they jumped over the fire holding hands, exchanged wreaths (symbol of maidenhood), looked for the fern flower and bathed in the morning dew. On this day, "village roads were plowed so that 'matchmakers would come sooner', or a furrow was plowed to a boy's house so that he would get engaged faster."
In some parts of Ukrainian and Belarusian tradition, it was only after Kupala that vesnianky were no longer sung. Eastern and Western Slavs were forbidden to eat cherries before that day. Eastern Slavs believed that women should not eat berries before St. John's Day, or their young children would die.
The custom of public condemnation and ridicule on Kupala Night (also George's Day in Spring and Trinity Day) is well known. Criticism and condemnation are usually directed at residents of one's own or a neighboring village who have violated social and moral norms over the past year. This social condemnation can be heard in Ukrainian and Belarusian songs, which contain themes of quarrels between girls and boys or residents of neighboring villages. Condemnation and ridicule are expressed in public and serve as a regulator of social relations.
According to Hutsuls beliefs, after Kupala come the "", when thunders and lightnings are common. These are days when thunderous spirits walk around, sending lightning bolts to the earth. "And then between the dark sky and the tops of the mountains, fire trees grow, connecting heaven and earth. And so it will be until the Elijah's day, the old Thunderous feast" after which, they say, "thunder will stop pounding."
Alexander Veselovsky, points out the similarity between the Slavic customs of Kupala Night and the Greek customs of Elijah's day, (Elijah the Thunderer).
Ritual dishes The consecration of the first fruits ripening at this time may have coincided with the Kupala Night holiday.
In some Russian villages, "votive porridge" was brewed: on St. Juliana's day (June 22), girls would gather to talk and, while singing, pound barley in a mortar. On the morning of St. Agrippina's day (June 23), barley was used to cook votive porridge. During the day, this porridge was given to the poor, and in the evening, sprinkled with butter, it was eaten by everyone.
Among Belarusians, delicacies brought from home were eaten both in separate groups and at potluck and consisted of vareniki, cheese, tvarog, flour porridge (), sweet dough (babka) with ground hemp seeds, onion, garlic, bread acid (cold borscht), and eggs in lard. In Belarus in the 19th century, vodka was drunk during the holiday, and wine was drunk in Podlachia and the Carpathians. Songs have preserved mention of the ancient drinks of the night: Will accept you, Kupal’nochka, as a guest, With treating you with green vine, With watering you with wheat beer, With feeding you with quark.
Water
The obligatory custom on this day was mass bathing. It was believed that on this day all evil spirits would leave the rivers, so it was safe to swim until Elijah's day. In addition, the water of Kupala Night was endowed with revitalizing and magical properties.
In places where people were not allowed to bathe in rivers (because of russets), they bathed in "sacred springs". In the Russian North, on the day before of Kupala Night, on St. Agrippina's Day, baths were heated in which people were washed and steamed, while steaming the herbs collected on that day. Water drawn from springs on St. John's Day was said to have miraculous and magical powers.
On this holiday, according to a common sign, water can "make friends" with fire. The symbol of this union was a bonfire lit along the banks of rivers. Wreaths were often used for divination on Kupala Night: if they floated on the water, it meant good luck and long life or marriage.
A 16th-century Russian scribe attempted to explain the name () and the healing power of St. John's Day by referring to the Old Testament legend of Tobias. As he writes, it was on this day that Tobias bathed in the Tigris, where, on the advice of the archangel Raphael, he discovered a fish whose entrails cured his father of blindness.
Bonfire
The main feature of the Kupala Night is the cleansing bonfires. The youths would bring down a huge amount of brushwood from all over the village and set up a tall pyramid, with a pole in the middle, on which was placed a wheel, a barrel of tar, a horse or cow skull (Polesia), etc. According to Tatyana Agapkin and Lyudmila Vinogradova, the symbol of a tall pole with a wheel attached to it generally correlated with the universal image of the world tree.