Love is in the air

Since our last posting, we've had a slew of love-related holidays celebrated here in Akhalkalaki. We tried our best to witness/participate in some of these holidays, and gathered snatches of information about what these holidays were, where they came from and why they are celebrated as they are. Lots of this information from people in town was interesting, but left us looking for more detailed explanations. I'll try to combine those stories with what the internet (yay internet!) has to say as well.

First, on the evening of February 13, they celebrated Derendes at the Armenian church. Everyone in town was telling us about how this was a must-view holiday celebration. It is a day of celebrating newlyweds, which includes a blessing at the church followed by a good old-fashioned bonfire and leaping over fire by said newlyweds. The favorite story told to us revolved around one enthusiastic new bride who, in her efforts to show her love for her new husband, jumped the bonfire in her wedding dress, only to get a bit caught up and not completely clear the flames, setting her white birthday-cake-of-a-dress aflame.

Sam and I went with our friend, Marianna, to try to witness this year's bonfire-jumping, but went too early. There was a pile of planks in the churchyard, but no fire yet. It was cold so we went home to warm up and wait for dusk to return to the church. When we went back to the church, alas--there was a nearly burned down fire and the last of the lovebirds had already cleared (at least we hope they cleared) the fire.

Though we were sad to miss the spectacle, Marianna filled us in on some additional interesting explanations to the bonfire jumping. The idea, she said, was that young couples should try to jump over the fire when it was still burning high. The higher the flames, the more passion and love one ensures his or her marriage to be blessed with. So people try to jump over the fire when it's high. But even if they can't jump the bonfire when it's first set alight (or don't want to risk jumping over flames too high lest they set themselves on fire), it's still okay to jump over the remaining embers of the bonfire. Jumping in general guarantees a degree of passion in the new marriage. Hopefully next year we'll get to see the jumpers in action and capture some leaps on camera.

Doing a little research on Derendes, I found this to be the official explanation of the holiday: "The Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, Dyarnuntarachor (Derendes as it is sometimes called), is celebrated every year on February 14, the 40th day after Jesus’ birth, marking His presentation at the Temple. Because of the significance of this important milestone in the Savior's life which we know from the Gospels, it has become a tradition that at the end of church services, newborn infants in the congregation be taken up on the altar and presented to the Lord. Part of the tradition of this celebration is the lighting of a bonfire after the church service. This practice is a remnant of the celebration of the birthday of Ahura-Mazda (Ormizd in Armenian), the chief God of our pre-Christian Zoroastrian ancestors who worshipped fire as the manifestation of the one true God. After Christianity came to our nation, this ancient custom continued, but with a shift in its emphasis. The great conflagration came to be associated with Christ, "the living fire" who is also the "Light of the World"."

(On a side note, according to people in town, and confirmed by our observations of how people celebrate holidays here in Akhalkalaki, the Armenian church tends to consider a holiday to begin after 6:00pm on the day before. So, although this has the holiday listed as falling on February 14, it was celebrated on the evening before. Also, the 40 days after Jesus' birth presumably counts from January 6, Armenian Christmas.)

Next up we had Valentine's Day. Really, Valentine's Day has only recently begun to be celebrated here in Georgia, and isn't filled with the same kinds of overly commercialized virtues as its American counterpart. At my school, most of the kids spent the day cutting out red paper hearts to glue to the windows (to replace the remaining New Year's decorations) and drawing new love-themed pictures for the school display cases. At the end of the day, I believe some of the students might have put on some sort of performance or production or something, given the very loud music that was blaring from the performance hall. I didn't stay around to catch the show, however, since Sam and I had an Armenian lesson scheduled.

(Sam and I celebrated Valentine's day in what I consider one of the best possible ways--we went for a run in the morning! My first run post-possible-toe-breaking. It went well, although slowly, given the snow and ice and slush. We're both getting ready to have some warmer weather and no more snow. We also ate some chocolate, since everything should be celebrated with chocolate.)

The biggest and most exciting of the love-centered holidays, though, fell on Friday-night-into-Saturday, February 18-19: Saint Sarkis Day. Everyone in town knows all about the traditions surrounding this holiday, but few could say much about the origins. Again, I turned to the trusty internet for some more information. Turns out St. Sarkis is an Armenian saint who served as a captain in the army and was martyred in 449 AD by the Persians for "refusing to worship fire and sacrifice to heathen gods." St. Sarkis is the patron of young people and their intercessor in finding love. Some legends about St. Sarkis include: he and 40 of his soldiers defeated an army of 10,000; he destroyed a (presumably Zoroastrian) temple to the fire gods after refusing to denounce his Christian faith; he appears on his horse to help those in need of assistance in getting married; his remains/relics were brought from Persia back to Armenia by founder of the Armenian alphabet Mesrop Mashtots. My favorite might be the legend that he and 39 of his soldiers, after a celebratory post-battle drunk, were ordered by the Persian king to be killed. The king sent 40 virgins to kill the soldiers as they slept. 39 of them carried out the task and killed the soldiers, but the woman sent to kill Captain Sarkis saw him sleeping and fell in love with him. Instead of killing him, she kissed him. He awoke and saw what happened, and took the young woman with him as he whipped up a storm and escaped on his horse.

Nowadays, St. Sarkis day is celebrated in by Armenians in Georgia and Armenia (and other Armenian communities throughout the world) as a day for young people to find love. Many people fast for 7 days before the holiday, and on the day before, people are supposed to eat salty foods (especially a salty pastry which is specially prepared for the holiday) and drink no water. When they go to sleep, they are supposed to have a dream in which their destined future spouse with bring them water to quench their thirst. (Freud would have a field day with this one.) Our host grandmother has told us a few times about her own story of seeing her future husband in her dreams, although she didn't know him when she dreamed him and despite the fact that she had been courted by another boy that she expected to marry. Another friend in town told of how her sister dreamed of a man with blue eyes and light hair. Although she found it impossible that she would ever marry a man with blue eyes and light hair (most Armenians tend to have black hair and dark eyes and complexions), indeed, she did meet and marry a man with blue eyes and fair hair.

Other people will put out a plate of a special kind of flour below their bedroom windows on the night of St. Sarkis Day. If, upon waking, they see the imprint of a horseshoe in the flour, it means St. Sarkis has visited and will intercede for them. In other words, they'll get married soon.

Here in Akhalkalaki, people follow these traditions as well as making a trek to the church named for St. Sarkis in a neighboring village. People are supposed to go on foot (it was about a 3-4 mile walk each way). When they get to the church, they should walk around it three times before going in. Inside, people light candles (and unmarried people are supposed to exchange candles with one another, preferably with someone who has qualities you'd want in a spouse). Along the road, people sell candles and doves. The doves are to be carried around the church three times and then either released or sacrificed. We saw a fair number of released doves (and the released doves seemed to either be stunned by being handled and carried around and so often seemed to basically hang out in easily recapturable spots; we presume that many were later re-sold to others coming to circle the church and wish/pray for love). We also saw one sacrificed dove. We still don't really know what one would do with a sacrificed bird, though.

It was pretty amazing to see the numbers of people walking to the St. Sarkis church. Sam and I went with some of the teachers from my school at about 8:00pm on Friday night (earlier than most people in town set off; most try to go closer to midnight). In a town were people (and especially women) aren't exactly thrilled about walking long distances or exercising, I haven't ever seen so many people walking around. I was surprised that it was as far as it was to the church as well (usually when we're told something is very far away, it turns out to be about half a mile). On the following day, we started hearing the stories of how crowded the church got by midnight and how difficult it was to breathe, let alone move, inside. We were very glad for the early start.

On Saturday (officially St. Sarkis Day), we went to a birthday party for a friend in town and everyone asked about one another's dreams. They spent a good part of the party relating stories of relatives or friends of acquaintances who had eventually married their St. Sarkis dream water bearers. Then they moved on to various types of fortune telling. The most widespread and commonly practiced fortune telling is reading coffee grinds, but other methods were also discussed.

For now, though, we'll have a little break from the love holidays. We'll just have to sit back and watch to see if St. Sarkis brings more weddings through Akhalkalaki (but the weddings here will deserve a separate blog post altogether).