Pentecost descends upon Banat with traditions that interweave the sacred with the profane, the common man being unable to separate the beautiful stories of fairy dances from the Christic significance of the birth of Christ’s church and the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of tongues of fire on the apostles who followed the Savior and, through them, on all Christians.
Maria Mândroane, an ethnologist at the Museum of the Banat Village (MSB) in Timisoara, believes that many village traditions have been altered in recent decades by their uncontrolled and erroneous transmission through social media, and so the true meanings will be lost in the coming decades, to the point that we will end up talking about the current traditions of the Banat people in the same way as we talk about the traditions of the Dacians today. That is why the ethnologist says it is important that ancient customs and traditions are at least told in the form they once were, even if they are no longer practiced exactly.
“On the Saturday of Pentecost, we remember the summer solstices. The Christian component of the feast is intertwined with that of Pentecost and is marked in Banat by prayers, and oak branches are brought to church, consecrated and then kept in the home. Now Pentecosts are making their appearance in our world, fairies who have to be dressed up so as not to offend people who happen to see them on this night. At Pentecost, earthen jugs of milk and cherries were carried on to toast. On great feasts, such as Pentecost, the treasures in the earth begin to play, the shepherds would see them glowing at night, for a flame would be lit above the treasures. They say that if you want to go just to get the treasure and you don’t have a pure soul, the glow of the treasure will snuff you out. In my village, Ciclova, it happened that a treasure was buried under the cross next to the village. None of the diggers ever found it, but at some point someone came along with a metal detector and dug something out. After a while, only bad things followed in that family, so I don’t know if it would have been better not to have found the treasure,” says Maria Mândroane.
Immediately after Pentecost, Christians celebrate the birth of St. John the Baptist or Sânzienele, who the ethnologist recalls were regarded as fairies in the village world. On this magical night, the heavens open up and make it easier for people on earth to connect with those who have gone to the other world. It was also when the waters cleared.
“The shepherds saw the night-breasted nighthawks playing. The grass there either burned or grew much greener. They said you could only see them if you stayed away. They’re good fairies, if you don’t disturb their dancing. They were dressed in ankle-length white linen shirts, which reminds us of the antiquity of the folk costume, because the Dacians had shirts, one piece, over which a patch was added, the future catrène. The Sânzienele are the flowers of St. John, good for tinsel, and the wreath on their heads signifies the wreath of the sun when the star is in its burning power. On Midsummer night, a fire was made in the hearth of the house and three other fires near the hearth. Each fire was given alms. Then, after midnight, they would go to the cemetery with a jug and a bundle of wood and build a fire at the cross, because the heavens were opening, but if the ancestors did not find the fire, they would be cold, they would cry and would not come with the family spirit to the great feasts, but would take a piece of wood in their mouths and leave. In the village tradition, all the members of the household, including the older generations, take part in the big celebrations,” explains Maria Mândroane.
On the eve of the great feast of Pentecost, Claudiu T. Arieșan, a Latin scholar from the West University of Timișoara (UVT), and the provost of Timișoara, Zaharia Pereș, spoke about the origin and significance of the feast, during a conference entitled “From Rosalia to Pentecost – The World under the Work of the Holy Spirit”.
If the color red, the symbol of Pentecost, also called the Despouring of the Holy Spirit, recalls the petals of roses sprinkled on the graves of Roman soldiers who fell in battle, the color green, also specific to this feast, recalls Jerusalem where the Jews commemorated the day on which they were given the Decalogue, a springtime celebration when people adorned everything with green branches.
“Roses obsessed the Romans, as they were the only people who had a holiday, Rosalia. The Romans had the custom of honoring their ancestors, and from them we have taken the symbol of wreaths, wreaths of flowers on graves. Their soldiers strewed petals on the graves of their fallen comrades. More than 2000 years ago, Rosalia was celebrated in a unique way: the huge Pantheon in Rome, open to the sky for three to five days in May or June, was adorned with 700 kg of rose petals. The Christian Church has not banished this custom. Beautiful things don’t have to be completely eliminated from our lives, and Rosalia was one of those things that didn’t have to be replaced, just transformed for us in Pentecost. From a sacred perspective, we have the same reverence for the holiday as they do. An autochthonous legend connects Pentecost with mares, which are caught in the horde and represent the Dionysian character of red, a color of passion. If someone stepped on the place where they danced, he would lose his mind”, explained conf. Claudiu T. Arieșan.
Dean Zaharia Pereș detailed, in context, that while in Rome this great feast of Rosalia was connected with roses and their red petals, in Jerusalem it was a Jewish celebration of the Weeks, of the tasting of fruits and the first harvest of the year. Jews came from all over to honor this feast.
“This was a Jewish holiday. Jesus’ disciples had nothing in common with this feast, but they respected it, being Jews. They had received new teaching from Jesus, who commanded the apostles at the Ascension: ‘Go and teach all nations, baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and I will be with you to the end of the ages. Jesus will be with them by the Holy Spirit through the feast of Pentecost. Then the Holy Spirit descended upon them in the form of tongues of fire. The feast is also called Great Sunday, because it speaks of the universality of salvation, but also Green Sunday, because the Jews, when they met for the Feast of Weeks, were honoring the moment of the reception of the Decalogue, when the commandments were given on Mount Sinai. It being spring and nature green all over, the Jews adorned their houses with green branches. We adorn our churches with linden leaves, which represent the tongues of fire and the remembrance of the Decalogue. It was the moment when the Christian Church was born, after the Holy Apostle Peter baptized five thousand souls in the name of the Most Holy Trinity, the first Christians, 50 days after the Resurrection,” says Father Zahariah Pereș.
And because Pentecosts in Banat are just as “nasty” as their brethren in the rest of the country, people take defensive measures on these days, putting beech, dill or garlic leaves on the door frames of their houses and stables to ward off evil spirits, adds the ethnologist of the Banat Village Museum. Mountainous Banat is the area where, in order to tickle the souls of fairies, boys were often given the name Rusalin, which is less common in other parts of the country. “A good wine and a tasty soup with dill, wormwood and garlic are the antidote to ward off the evil spirits,” says Claudiu T. Arieșan. (Otilia Halunga)