In October 2023, Russian media wrote about the upcoming old holiday, which is celebrated at the end of the month and which can be made by the Russian alternative to Halloween. We checked the correctness of such statements.

In the middle of the month, Tatarstan Republican publications (GTRK "Tatarstan", "Tatar-inform","New Kama"And others) invited residents and guests of the republic to visit the Pumpkin Savior festival in the Elabuzhsky district, planned for October 28. The program of the event included an exhibition of decorative and applied creativity, a concert of creative groups, folk games and round dances, as well as creative and culinary competitions. “Pumpkin Savior is a Slavic holiday that reads a pumpkin as a symbol of crop, fertility, health and longevity,” the authors of notes in regional media said. Although the festival near Elabuga took place in the last weekend in front of Halloween, this holiday in publications is not directly mentioned.

Hallowin was spoke about the pumpkin rescue as an alternative, shortly after on October 20, on the page of the Izhevsk school No. 16 in VKontakte was published Announcement of the thematic day "Pumpkin Spas." "Someone has Halloween, and we have a pumpkin saved!" - So this post began. The picture attached to him said: “Pumpkin Savior is a Slavic holiday, which is celebrated in Russia on October 31. On this day, pumpkin is revered as a symbol of crop, fertility, health and longevity. ” Dozens of media wrote about the initiative of teachers from Udmurtia, while the authors of many notes directly quoted the biography of the holiday in the announcement (among them, for example, a state RIA "News"). Celebrated the "ancient holiday" in other regions, for example in Tyumen region.

To check when this mysterious holiday has appeared, you can use the Integum base, which presents articles of almost all Russian media over the past 30 years. This base shows that the phrase “pumpkin saving” in itself, starting in 2016, is often found in Russian media as a common joke (like “instead of Halloween, pumpkin saved”).

In 2022, an interesting revolution takes place. Everything begins relatively innocently: in the newspapers (mainly regional ones) there are publications on how here and there people seek to celebrate the pumpkin saving. So, a news leaflet of the Russian Christian State Academy reportsthat at the initiative of students in the institution, a crop festival will be celebrated - pumpkin saving. Kaluga regional branch of the Union of Women of Russia It was arranged "Russian holiday of pumpkin" with games, ditties and folk songs. Ksenia Mikhailova, correspondent of the Volga Newspaper, in a small note He claims that the pumpkin saved gradually acquires “the status of the people in response to Western traditions that are trying to penetrate into our lives.” “Unlike gloomy Halloween, where the main attributes are blood, ghouls, evil spirits, pumpkin saving - good, bright, positive and, most importantly, close to our spirit and culture,” the author writes.

Further in the creation of the biography of the new old holiday Set down NIA "Krasnoyarsk". In the note on how the pumpkin saved becomes an alternative to foreign Halloween, it states: “The fetus of the pumpkin was brought to St. Vladimir, the sun, the sun by Byzantine monks, was enormous. Since then, in Rus' they began to grow pumpkin. ” The author probably forgot that the pumpkin Brought From the New World to Europe only in the 16th century, and Vladimir is clear the sun - this is the distorted name of Vladimir Krasno Sun, character of epicswho inspired the heroes to fight enemies and has a very indirect attitude towards the prince Vladimir the GreatThe deceased in 1015. 

In 2023, the number of articles on this topic, as evidenced by the Intergram databases, increased more than ten times: 808 publications as of October 30 against 75 notes a year earlier. The celebration of the "ancient Holiday Feast" is already seriously written by both federal and large regional publications. The reason for the appearance of at least part of such publications was just the news about the celebration of the pumpkin Savior in the Izhevsk school.

At the same time, representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church deny the presence of such a holiday on the church calendar and speak about the events dedicated to it quite sharply. “The appearance of the so -called pumpkin Savior is an attempt to combine the incompatible. On the one hand, many understand that Halloween is bad, and thank God that they understand this ... And it’s good that people do not perceive Halloween as something sweet and kind, but at the same time it’s bad that they are trying to create a certain replacement, which turned out to be just as bad, ”said the head of the missionary department Kazan dioceses Alexander Ermolin. In turn, the head of the press service of the Kuzbass diocese Vyacheslav Lansky saidWhat is between traditional rescue (honey, apple, bread) and pumpkin nothing in common. The clergy also considered blasphemous the thoughtless use of the word “Savior”, which is “etymologically close to one of the names of Jesus Christ - the Savior”.

Suppose that the Slavs really had a crop associated with a pumpkin festival, which was simply ignored by the church. To verify this hypothesis, we turn to the studies of ethnographers (study folk cultures) and folklorists (examine oral folk texts).

The most famous and most authoritative publication of the reference type to verify such issues is the five -volume encyclopedia "Slavic antiquities»Edited by academician Nikita Tolstoy, in the creation of which experts on the history and folk culture of the eastern, Western and southern Slavs from the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences took part. In this work, neither pumpkin saved, nor, in principle, special ritual manipulations with pumpkin (in the territory of the Russian Empire, it took root much later than in Europe). Moreover, there is no information in the “Slavic antiquities” of information about the Unified Russian or Slavic Harvest Festival, which would be at the end of October - early November.

The life of farmers, including the Slavs, was tough, firstly, with a natural cycle, and secondly, with the stages of obtaining a crop. Therefore, there were a lot of holidays in the national calendar, which were associated with the receipt of a particular product. For example, apple saving is just such a holiday, it is tied to an approximate time, when you can and need to collect apples. 

But since the traditional economic activity of the Slavs - the anti -navigation, the main rites, including holidays, were focused around the time of grain harvest. Not all these rituals were attached to specific dates, the time of their conduct was slightly varied. In the south of Russia and in Ukraine often celebrated Heils are the first day of harvesting, which was on Petrov Day (July 12). The eldest respected woman cut off the first ear, and bread and salt were laid on the field (this is an example of magical gifts with nature forces). About a month later (in the middle and end of August; at the same time, real rescuers were celebrated) harvesting came to an end, and then daring was arranged. Wreaths and “beards” weaved from the last spikelets, solemnly carried them to the house, where they arranged a cheerful feast.

In other words, if it occurred to someone to celebrate the ancient Slavic crop festival, then it would be logical to do in August-and for a long time to think about which holidays to choose from a complex agrarian cycle. In October, the Slavs performed completely different rituals.

For the folk culture of the Slavs, one of the most important rituals is those associated with the veneration of the ancestors. The ancestors must constantly keep in touch, because the well -being of the family and the crop depend on them. In the People’s Calendar of Belarusians and Ukrainians, there were special memorial days in which it was necessary to treat the dead ancestors (they were called "grandfathers" or "jada"). It was believed that the ancestors come on this day to visit their relatives, they want to wash and eat. Therefore, it was necessary not only to cook ritual food and call the dead to the table, but also to offer them to wash: they put basin in the bath, put new brooms and did not approach it throughout the evening. 

One of these memorial evenings was on Dmitriev Day, October 26, or on the Saturday previous to him. On this day, the late ancestors symbolically found themselves with living at the same table. Surprisingly, it is precisely by this fact that Dmitrov Saturday approaches Halloween, which also grew out of the Celtic cult of remembrance of the dead. 

Thus, the pumpkin rescue is an invented holiday that has nothing to do with the ancient Slavic rituals that are dedicated to the crop (they were performed at the turn of July-Augustus, but not October-November). It is absent in the church Orthodox calendar. The first, and comic, the mention of the pumpkin Savior occurs in the mid-2010s, but very quickly they came up with a biography that made it possible to use a non-existent holiday for the “import substitution” of Halloween.

Photo on the cover: Pixabay

Not true

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. T. Agapkina. The mythopoietic foundations of the popular Slavic calendar
2. A. Arkhipova. Pumpkin Savior, or the ban on Halloween: how the holidays are invented and prohibited
3. Is it true that the parade in honor of the Day of the Dead in Mexico appeared after the film about James Bond?