Russians revel in ancient holiday

Part of Moscow has been set on fire for one day. A festival dedicated to a Russian folk holiday, Ivan Kupala Day, has been organised in the capital. It celebrates the elements of fire and water. This year the weather's contributed to the event.

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• ancient
• holiday
• folk
• festival
• Ivan
• Kupala
• Day

[daveymm]

Kupala comes from the slavic word "to bathe" (купаться) and relates to the tradition of throwing water at each other as part of the old traditions relating to fire and water of "pagan" religions. Ivan was added by the Orthodox church in an attempt link the festival to John the baptist, since convincing newly "christianized" Slavs to abandon their traditional festivals was not working.

[acerb45666555]

cool ! this means Slavic Church and the Irish Church have much in common! ..........the only two European churches seeing the wisdom of mixing old with new! :)

[4hNiu]

isn´t Iva Kupala a persons name?

[Solechnaya]

I don't know.

Islam has some fundamental issues there. Give the Qur'an a good, deep read.

[Jackk84]

In Poland we called it Kupala Night or Night of St. John

[Rain4732]

And Jesus wasn't Human sacrifice???? Right.... At any rate as Ken stated All Spiritual paths are worth while as long as it does what it needs to do for you. All religions throughout history have glory days and days not so much.

[Ken69a]

You will find, all believes are good.

Christianity, Islam, Jewish, Hindu, and all others.

It is just the Morons that use the faiths of as a reason to commit evil.

[carlisle9414]

LOL Russian Hippies!

[xenzuva]

it's cursetianism that's evil- true Christianity never condoned or carried out murder of human beings

cursetianism was invented by Rome, by Constantine, the Catholic Church- don't be confused

[tsarvadim]

Jidovka?