Church year. Church celebrates the new year

The Church New Year is an important stage for the Christian world. It is also called the beginning of a new church year, the beginning of the indiction. Such an event marks the beginning of the history of the New Testament.

This is a non-transitory holiday, if I may say so. Indict has many meanings, but in almost every case this word means the beginning of some period. In Orthodoxy, the indiction is the beginning of the church year and the cycle of worship. It is from September 14 that the church calendar begins.

The meaning of the holiday

Every holiday in Christianity refers us to some events from the Gospel. Any celebration or fast reflects some story from the New Testament. The holidays are connected with the holy apostles, Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary.

The New Testament story of Jesus Christ begins not with his birth, but with the birth of the Virgin. In Orthodoxy, the Heavenly Intercessor is considered the beginning of all beginnings, for without her there would be no Christ, there would be no Salvation. The New Year, as it were, shows us that everything repeats itself again and again. Every year we must remember each stage of this history in order to give it its due. Each holiday has its own meaning, studying which we study the history of the salvation of our souls.

None of the events in the life of Christ and the Mother of God was accidental. This is what the New Year shows us. The Church honors this holiday, so special services are always held in churches on September 14th. This is a kind of New Year for the church and all Christians.

How to celebrate new year

The clergy assure that this is one of the best moments to go to the temple and take communion. On this day, people ask for forgiveness from everyone who was offended during the church year, give gifts related to faith and religion: icons, calendars, and much more.

The people have always believed that the Orthodox New Year should mean a renewal of the spiritual character. People were very responsible for meeting the New Year. On this day, they said goodbye to summer and met autumn. Even in the early period of the history of Russia, around this time, people greeted autumn with songs and dances. The beginning of the indiction in Christianity is not a typically positive holiday. It is rather iconic. It represents a period of spiritual renewal.

As for prayers on the New Year, there are no restrictions and instructions. On this important day, you can read any prayers that will allow you to strengthen your faith and enter a new stage. It can be either the "Our Father" or the "Symbol of Faith" or some other common prayer. Good luck and don't forget to press the buttons and

13.09.2017 04:34

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International Women's Day on March 8 is a memorable date for the UN, and the organization includes 193 states. Commemorative dates announced by the General Assembly are designed to encourage UN members to show increased interest in these events. However, at the moment, not all member states of the United Nations have approved the celebration of Women's Day in their territories on this date.

Below is a list of countries that celebrate International Women's Day. Countries are grouped into groups: in a number of states, the holiday is an official non-working day (day off) for all citizens, somewhere around March 8, only women have a rest, and there are states where they work on March 8.

In which countries is March 8 a public holiday (for everyone):

* In Russia- March 8 is one of the most beloved holidays, when men congratulate all women without exception.

* In Ukraine- International Women's Day continues to be an additional holiday, despite regular proposals to exclude the event from the number of non-working days and replace it, for example, with Shevchenko's Day, which will be celebrated on March 9.
* In Abkhazia.
* in Azerbaijan.
* In Algeria.
* In Angola.
* In Armenia.
* In Afghanistan.
* In Belarus.
* To Burkina Faso.
* in Vietnam.
* In Guinea-Bissau.
* In Georgia.
* In Zambia.
* In Kazakhstan.
* In Cambodia.
* In Kenya.
* In Kyrgyzstan.
* In the DPRK.
* In Cuba.
* In Laos.
* In Latvia.
* In Madagascar.
* In Moldova.
* In Mongolia.
* In Nepal.
* In Tajikistan Since 2009, the holiday has been renamed Mother's Day.
* In Turkmenistan.
* In Uganda.
* In Uzbekistan.
* In Eritrea.
* In South Ossetia.

Countries where March 8 is a day off for women only:

There are countries in which only women are released from work on International Women's Day. This rule has been approved:

* In China.
* In Madagascar.

Which countries celebrate March 8, but it's a working day:

In some countries, International Women's Day is widely celebrated, but is a working day. It:

* Austria.
* Bulgaria.
* Bosnia and Herzegovina.
* Germany- in Berlin since 2019, March 8 is a day off, in the whole country it is a working day.
* Denmark.
* Italy.
* Cameroon.
* Romania.
* Croatia.
* Chile.
* Switzerland.

Which countries do NOT celebrate March 8:

* In Brazil - most of the inhabitants of which have not even heard of the "international" holiday on March 8. The main event of late February - early March for Brazilians and Brazilians is not Women's Day at all, but the world's largest Brazilian festival, also called the carnival in Rio de Janeiro, according to the Guinness Book of Records. In honor of the festival, Brazilians rest for several days in a row, from Friday to noon on the Catholic Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent (which for Catholics has a movable date and begins 40 days before Catholic Easter).

* In the USA, the holiday is not an official holiday. In 1994, an attempt by activists to get the celebration approved in Congress was unsuccessful.

* In the Czech Republic (Czech Republic) - most of the country's population considers the holiday as a relic of the communist past and the main symbol of the old regime.

Traditions and customs of Maslenitsa:

The essence of the Maslenitsa holiday in the Christian sense is as follows:

Forgiveness of offenders, restoration of good relations with neighbors, sincere and friendly communication with relatives and friends, as well as charity- that's what is the main thing in this Cheese week.

It is no longer possible to eat meat dishes on Maslenitsa, and this is also the first step towards fasting. But pancakes are baked and eaten with great pleasure. They are baked fresh and leavened, with eggs and milk, served with caviar, sour cream, butter or honey.

In general, during Shrovetide week one should have fun and attend festive events (skating, skiing, snowtubes, slides, horseback riding). Also, it is necessary to devote time to the family - to have fun together with relatives and friends: go somewhere together, the "young" should visit their parents, and the parents, in turn, should come to visit the children.

Date of Maslenitsa (Orthodox and pagan):

In church tradition Maslenitsa is celebrated for 7 days (weeks) from Monday to Sunday, before the most important Orthodox fast, so the event is also called "Pancake Week".

The time of the Maslenitsa week depends on the beginning of Great Lent, which makes Easter, and every year it shifts in accordance with the Orthodox church calendar.

So, in 2019, the Orthodox Maslenitsa takes place from March 4, 2019 to March 10, 2019, and in 2020 - from February 24, 2020 to March 1, 2020.

As for the pagan date of Maslenitsa, then d the ancient Slavs celebrated a holiday according to the solar calendar - at the time of the onset of astronomical spring, which occurs in . The Old Russian celebration lasted for 14 days: it began a week before the Spring Equinox, and ended a week later.

Description of Maslenitsa celebration:

The tradition of celebrating Maslenitsa with a merry festivity has survived to this day.

Most Russian cities host events called "Wide Shrovetide". In the capital of Russia, the city of Moscow, the central platform for festive festivities is traditionally the Vasilyevsky Spusk of Red Square. Also held abroad "Russian Maslenitsa" to promote Russian traditions.
It is customary, especially on the last Sunday, when workers and students can take a break, organize mass holidays like in the old days, with songs, games, seeing off and burning an effigy of Maslenitsa. Shrovetide towns organize scenes for performances, places for the sale of food (pancakes are required), and souvenirs, attractions for children. Masquerades with mummers and carnival processions are held.

What are the days of Pancake week, what are they called (name and description):

Each day of Maslenitsa has its own name and has its own traditions. Below is the name and description for each day.

Monday - Meeting. Since the first day is a working day, in the evening father-in-law and mother-in-law come to visit the parents of the daughter-in-law. The first pancakes are baked, which can be given to the poor in remembrance of the dead. On Monday, a straw effigy is dressed up and displayed on a hill in the place where the festivities are held. In dances and games, stylized fisticuffs "wall to wall" are held. The "first pancake" is baked and solemnly eaten as a reminder of the soul.

Tuesday - Gambling. The second day is traditionally the day of the young. Youth festivities, skiing from the mountains ("pokatushki"), matchmaking are signs of this day. It should be noted that the church forbids weddings on Maslenitsa, as well as in Lent. Therefore, on Maslenitsa Tuesday, the bride is married to play a wedding after Easter on Krasnaya Gorka.

Wednesday - Lakomka. On the third day, the son-in-law comes to mother-in-law for pancakes.

Thursday - Revelry, Revelry. On the fourth day, folk festivals become massive. Wide Maslenitsa- this is the name of the days from Thursday to the end of the week, and the day of generous treats itself is called "riotous quarter".

Friday - Mother-in-law evening. On the fifth day of Shrove Tuesday mother-in-law with friends or relatives comes to visit son-in-law for pancakes. Pancakes, of course, should be baked by her daughter, and her son-in-law should show hospitality. In addition to the mother-in-law, all relatives are invited to visit.

Saturday - Zolov's gatherings. On the sixth day husband's sisters come to visit(you can also invite other relatives of the husband). It is considered good form not only to feed the guests plentifully and tasty, but also to give gifts to the sisters-in-law.

Sunday - Seeing off, Forgiveness Sunday. On the last (seventh) day, before Lent, one should repent and show mercy. All relatives and friends ask each other for forgiveness. In places of public celebrations, carnival processions are held. The effigy of Maslenitsa is solemnly burned, thus turning into a beautiful Spring. With the onset of darkness, festive fireworks are launched.

In churches, also on Sunday, at the evening service, the rite of forgiveness is performed, when the priest asks for forgiveness from church servants and parishioners. All believers in turn ask for forgiveness and bow to each other. In response to a request for forgiveness, they say "God will forgive."

What happens at the end of the Maslenitsa celebration:

And at the end of the Maslenitsa holiday, Orthodox believers begin one of the most important fasts. We all remember the saying: Not everything is Shrovetide for the cat - there will be Great Lent".

To the Creator of all creatures, putting times and years in His power,
bless the crown of the year of thy goodness, O Lord, keeping in the world
people and your city through the prayers of the Mother of God and save us.
Troparion of the Indicta (Church New Year)

Again and again the Holy Church calls us to enter into the yearly circle of sacred remembrances, where the Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition are preserved in all their depth and fullness.

A new liturgical circle of the main, twelfth church holidays begins with the feast of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos, which is celebrated on the seventh day after the Church New Year, September 21. The liturgical year begins. It was the Most Holy Theotokos who was the Door through which God entered our lives. The Feast of the Assumption of the Most Holy Theotokos, on August 28, ended the yearly circle of services.

The New Year is the most inconspicuous Orthodox holiday, which in the church calendar is called the beginning of the indiction. Unfortunately, we do not know very well when our Orthodox church year begins and why is it so named?

Some may wonder - why in the Orthodox Church the new year comes on September 1, at the beginning of autumn? Indeed, at first glance, it would be more logical to consider the beginning of the new year the first day of spring, and not autumn. But this is only at first glance, from which the root causes of the existence of this world elude.

And the logic here is the same that underlies the calculation of the beginning of the church liturgical day not in the morning, as is customary in secular, civil calculation, but from the evening of the previous day. Therefore, in Orthodox churches, church holidays do not begin with the morning service, but with the All-Night Vigil, which takes place the night before.

The Holy Scripture, which tells about the creation of the world, testifies to us: “The earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the deep: And God said: let there be light. And there was light. And God saw the light that it was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. And God called the light day and the darkness night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day” (Genesis 1:2-5). That is why the servants of God, even from the most ancient times of the Old Testament, determined the beginning of the liturgical day to be precisely the evening, and not the morning. Why does the Church New Year begin precisely in the evening of the cycle of the seasons, and not in the morning: that is, with the onset of autumn, and not spring. In such a definition of the beginning, both of the earthly day and of the year, lies a deep thought about the creation of this world and its primary non-existence.

It should be said that the Jewish civil new year from ancient Old Testament times also comes in September, or rather, in the month of Afanim, or, as it began to be called after the Babylonian captivity, Tishri, which, due to the displacement of the Jewish lunar calendar, comes in the middle of our September. This month of Tishri is the seventh from the month of the creation of the world, which is called the month of Aviv or Nisan.

The New Year holidays among the Jews were holidays not only for people, but for all nature; they brought with them peace not only to man and cattle, but also to the plow and the sickle, the scythe and the knife that cleans the vine.

The month of September is also the most important in the course of nature, the most sacred in the structure of the Old Testament Church. On the first day of the seventh month, when New Summer was celebrated in the Old Testament, Jesus Christ read in the synagogue of Nazareth the prophecy of Isaiah (Isaiah 61:1-2) about the coming of an auspicious year. In the Lord's reading (Luke 4:16-22) the Byzantines saw His indication of the celebration of the New Year's Day. Tradition connects this event itself with the day of September 1. The Menology of Basil II (10th century) says: “From that time on, He gave us Christians this holy feast” (PG. 117, Col. 21). And to this day in the Orthodox Church on September 1 (according to the old style) at the Liturgy it is precisely this gospel conception about the preaching of the Savior that is read.

The very name of the month of September comes from the Latin word "septem", which means "seven", thus the month of September is called the seventh. The word "indict" is also of Latin origin and means "announcement". In this case, it is the announcement of the beginning of a new liturgical year.

The feast of the Church New Year itself was established by the Holy Fathers of the 1st Ecumenical Council in Nicaea in 325, in memory of the official end of the three-century persecution of the Christian Church by the Equal-to-the-Apostles King Constantine the Great, which followed in 313. This decision of the first Christian Roman emperor followed his miraculous victory over the tyrant of Rome, Maxentius, whose troops and malice far outnumbered those of Constantine. This happened on September 1, 312. Therefore, the holy fathers of the First Ecumenical Council established to celebrate the New Year as the beginning of Christian freedom, and at the same time not forgetting the biblical Old Testament tradition. Since that time, the circle of the year in the Roman Empire began in September. This chronology was dominant in almost all of Europe until the middle of the 15th century. Together with the Christian faith, the Greek Church transferred its chronology to the Russian, which still preserves this chronology.

From the time of the baptism of Russia and in our Fatherland, the New Year was celebrated on September 1 until the reign of Peter I, who in 1700 moved the beginning of the civil year to January 1. The Church is not in a hurry to follow the changing spirit of this world, but, in accordance with the biblical tradition, continues to consider the beginning of the Indict, that is, the Church New Year, the first day of the seventh month from the creation of the world, that is, September 1, according to the old style.

The fundamental principles of the Orthodox Church are the inviolability of sacred things and dogmas. The history of the Church knows what powerful heretical movements arose in an attempt to improve any dogma accepted by her conciliar mind. Equally inviolable is the shrine of the Great Indiction, consecrated by the Church - the Julian calendar. Therefore, adopted in 1582 with the best of intentions (to achieve greater astronomical accuracy and avoid the gradual shift of the Easter holiday from spring to summer), the calendar reform of Pope Gregory XIII led to a distortion of the sequence of events that is unthinkable for the Orthodox consciousness. Easter, calculated according to the Gregorian calendar, often coincides with the Jewish Passover, and sometimes ahead of it.

The calendar is a rhythm that connects each person with God and the historical memory of all mankind.

With the beginning of each new liturgical year, the Church again testifies to the world about the Coming of Christ, His holy Incarnation from the Virgin Mary into our human nature, His heavenly teaching about sacrificial love to which we are called; His Divine sacrifice on Golgotha ​​for human sin, His glorious Resurrection and Ascension, and then sending down from the Father all-sanctifying and regenerating us to eternal life in God the Holy and Divine Spirit.

Happy New Church Year to you, dear brothers and sisters!

Archpriest Nikolai Matviychuk

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Perhaps the most inconspicuous Orthodox holiday is, which in the church calendar is solemnly called the “beginning of the indiction” and is celebrated (according to the old style). This date is considered the first day of the new church year. Although today we, who are ready to celebrate the secular New Year not only on the 1st, but also, without refusing to share the festive New Year's meal with Muslims, Buddhists, Confucians and Jews, do not know well when our Orthodox Church year begins.

The last holiday that ends the church year is - (according to the new style), and the first holiday of the new church year is the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos ().

The celebration of the New Year began in September 1363 as a tribute to the civil Byzantine tradition. Since 1492, the New Year began to be celebrated in Russia as a church and state holiday. The meaning of the divine service on this day was the memory of the Savior's sermon in the Nazareth synagogue, when Jesus Christ said that he had come "to heal the brokenhearted."

But it is also important to note that any New Year's holiday is a rather conditional date. Astronomers know that all points of the earth's orbit are absolutely equal, and it makes no difference which of them to take as the origin. September 1st of the Julian calendar (14th according to the new style) is the same conditional date. Even the academic year in Medieval Russia did not begin on September 1, but three months later, in memory of the prophet Nahum. And the unlucky schoolboy, going to the deacon who taught him for a pot of porridge, imagined his heavy right hand and muttered a rhymed prayer: "Prophet Nahum, instruct the mind".

Both in the Roman Empire and in Russia, the onset of the New Year was celebrated on the first of March. Alexandrian scholars substantiated this tradition by the fact that God, according to their calculations, completed the creation of the world on the first of March, on Friday, which preceded the day of rest, Saturday.

September 1, which replaced the usual in Russia in 1363, and in the Roman Empire in the reign of Constantine the Great in 325, is a tribute to the civil Byzantine tradition. The beginning of an indiction is the beginning of the financial year, the beginning of a new tax collection period. The indiction itself is one fifteenth of the indiction, a fifteen-year period of time, which, under the Equal-to-the-Apostles Emperor Constantine, established itself as a compromise unit of historical time reference between the year and the century.

Some historians believe that the counting by indictions was introduced by Constantine to replace the counting by pagan Olympiads, which were finally abolished by Theodosius the Great in 394. Sacred tradition has preserved evidence that indiction and indiction were introduced into the church calendar as a token of gratitude to the Emperor Equal to the Apostles for ending persecution and proclaiming religious tolerance.

Another concept is connected with the concept of indiction and simple indiction - the Great Indiction or, as it was called in Russia, the Peaceful Circle. The Great Indiction, unlike the simple one, is not an economic value. This huge period of time of 532 years determines the Easter cycle, and with it the entire church calendar. The creation of the Great Indiction by the fathers of the First Ecumenical Council was, in fact, the churching of the Julian calendar known from pagan times.

We meet the New Year
Instead of a Christmas tree, a sheaf of wheat
We dress up in beads, ribbons,
For everything to be great.

Autumn bountiful harvest
Sets tables for us
Be happy Slavs
We talk to each other.

Beginning with the New Year
New and happy year
May love, kindness and joy
He will bring to every home.