🌾 Sowing Traditions 🌾

During the Christmas and New Year holidays, almost every day was filled with rituals and customs. 😍

To celebrate the New Year, boys would go from house to house sowing seeds before sunrise. They carried a small bag or mitten filled with mixed grains — rye, wheat, peas, millet, and more — and scattered them over the hosts and around the house, reciting blessings such as:

• “Produce, O Lord, rye, wheat, and all sorts of crops”;

• “Good day, be healthy, Happy New Year!”;

• “I sow, I scatter, I plant — wishing you a Happy New Year!”;

• “Grow and multiply, rye, wheat, all sorts of crops. Happy New Year!”

Or they used rhymes like:

“Grow and multiply,

Rye and wheat,

Peas and lentils,

And all sorts of crops.

Roots below, ears above,

May the coming year

Bring more than the last,

May there be plenty

In the barn and in the field.

I sow, I scatter, I plant,

Happy New Year to you!”

Another variation went:

“Grow and multiply, rye, wheat, all sorts of crops,

For happiness, health, and the New Year,

May the harvest be better than last year —

Hemp to the ceiling, flax to the knees,

So that you, descendants of Dazhboh,

May have no headaches.

Be healthy. Happy New Year. God bless!”

💞 During the sowing, girls would catch some of the grains and use them for divination: if the number of grains was even, the girl would marry that year, and if odd — she would remain single.

🌾 The seeds used for sowing were carefully collected and stored by the household to be mixed with other seeds for planting in spring.

☝️ Some of the grains were also given to the chickens, as it was believed this would make them lay more eggs. 🐣 Our ancestors believed that sowing grains should only be eaten by birds, because an egg contains the beginning of life, just like a seed…

• “For happiness, health, and a fruitful new year!” 🌞