February 1 - what is the main holiday for you?

2024 Author: Priscilla Miln | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 00:21

February 29, which happens every four years, due to its rarity - everyone knows Kasyanov's day. But regarding the festivity of the first day of the last month of winter, not everyone is informed. Meanwhile, events "for every taste and color" correspond to it. Whether your eyes are on the West or on the East, on the first of February there is a festive occasion for almost everyone.

Uncle Sam's Extravaganza

Let's first look at the calendar, on February 1, which holiday is celebrated by adherents of American democracy.

Uncle Sam, the main DJ of the planetary disco, "comes off" at the start of the month "in full"! After all, it is on the first day of this month that National Freedom Day is established, unofficially also called "the birthday of all American presidents." Not at all because historically significant personalities, Lincoln (on the 12th) and Washington (on the 22nd), were born in February. ExactlyFebruary 1 (what a holiday for African Americans!) Abraham Lincoln in 1865 initiated the 13th amendment with his signature, abolishing slavery. It was ratified later, on December 18 of the same year, after the death of the Liberating President on April 15. Officially, the holiday was rescheduled for February in the post-war 1948 year by Head of State Harry Truman.

February 1 - what holiday do Democrats celebrate in Russia

In one we are ahead of the Americans: compared with the fall of the shameful slavery of the New World, serfdom in our Fatherland was abolished four years earlier. The Manifesto of the Tsar-Liberator, by the way, also fell on February of the old style, the 19th (according to the modern Gregorian calendar - March 3), 1861.

But already in the 20th century, on February 1 (what a holiday for adherents of democracy!) Yeltsin, the future first president of the Russian Federation, was born in 1931 in the Ural village of Butka. Whether he freed the citizens of the country from the bonds of the Soviet system or pushed them to the destruction of a great power, history will impartially judge only in a hundred or two hundred years.

If you care little about who ordered the music to which the eccentric controversial president danced, you can raise a glass of sparkling wine or a faceted glass of Russian vodka to his memory on the first day of February.

Day of His Holiness Enthronement

Let's look in the calendars of the Moscow Patriarchate, under the date of February 1, which holiday the church people celebrate in our country. Traditionally, our Local Church celebrates the day of enthronementruling patriarch. The sixteenth primate of the Russian Orthodox Church was elevated to the highest level of the church hierarchy on February 1, 2009.

Modern society is so uninhibited that even in the slogan "party in a new format" the rank of Patriarch is put in place of the subject without a hitch. To judge how church life is "formatted" under the guidance of His Holiness is a matter of conciliar reason. In the churches of the Moscow Patriarchate - somewhere with sincere love, and somewhere for obedience to the canons - the prayerful many years of prayer for the head of the Church is annually proclaimed on this day.

In the practice of divine services, it is left to the rector to judge which feast day to consider as the main one during the evening singing of the canons, the reading of the Apostle and the Gospel at the Liturgy. Naturally, in churches dedicated to Russian saints, in memorial places associated with their ascetic life, on a weekday, the primacy of honor is given to precisely these lamps of Orthodoxy. So, in Zvenigorod on the first day of February, the memory of one of the disciples of St. Sergius of Radonezh, a strict ascetic of piety, St. Savva Storozhevsky.

Fiery hell and winter thunder

For a complete contrast, let's talk about February 1 - what holiday the Orthodox world and the pagans celebrate on this day. Universal Orthodoxy honors St. Macarius, called the Great (also known as the Egyptian). The monk was distinguished by amazing humility, as his life tells. Of the special events of his life, it is worth noting the following: having metonce in the desert, the dried skull of a pagan priest, the saint was honored to enter into an interview with the soul of the deceased. He told him that through the prayers of the monk, even the pagans in hell receive some relief. The priest himself is in a great fire, but at the same time he stands on the miter of an apostate bishop, who has sunk even deeper into the lake of tormenting flame. It was revealed to St. Macarius from this conversation that during life, demons have great power over pagans.

It is noteworthy that the Druids celebrated on this day Imbolc (the name, according to some sources, goes back to the concept of "downpour"), and the Eastern Slavs - Gromnitsa. According to legend, February 1 is the only day of winter during which a thunderstorm is possible. Like it or not, each of us can try to make sure from our own experience. After all, under a favorable set of circumstances, a person living on Earth will be able to meet the first of February several dozen times.