Honey-Blessing Festival/Feast of the Maccabees (Makauje). Мядовы Спас-Макаўе.
Three mid-August church feasts in Belarus vivify pre-Christian traditions absorbed into our Christian faith.
The first of these is the August 14 Orthodox Honey-Blessing Festival/Feast of the Maccabees, which inaugurates the two-week Orthodox Dormition fast. The Orthodox church tries to focus attention on a churchly interpretation of the day. However, the very name chosen — Maccabees (Makauje – Макаўе) — reflects the church’s recognition that the deep folk tradition of having poppy seeds (mak – мак), flowers, honey or water blessed and then using the seeds and flowers to protect shrines and the home, and consuming the honey or water to protect one’s spiritual and physical well-being, will not go away. Indeed, every Orthodox priest knows that his parishioners, while patiently taking part in a service in honor of the Maccabees, are focused on the traditions with profound pre-Christian roots at the end of the service: obtaining a blessing for honey, garden flowers, and poppy seeds; drinking water, or washing the face and eyes with water, blessed by the priest.
In 2001 it was my great fortune to be able to travel with renowned Belarusian ethnograph-photographer Dzianis Ramaniuk to photograph what were already by then rarely-performed traditional village rites of Makauje in Rudnja Bartalamjejeuskaja (Chachersk District; see photos of the day for Aug. 14, 2012; Aug. 14, 2011; Aug. 13, 2010) and, below, in Navilauka (Vjetka District) in eastern Belarus. While these rites had a Christian overlay, they were performed without priests and with abiding pre-Christian elements. The granny in the photo below walked to an ancient spring deep in the marshland forest to decorate a cross with an icon, runner, apples, and a sprig of dried poppy pods.
One notes with deep regret the deaths of the older women who led these rites. Celebration of this rite in these villages died out more than a decade ago.
Makauje, Navilauka (Vjetka District) 2001. Макаўе, Навілаўка (Веткаўскі раён) 2001 год.
