LAST BUT ONE SUNDAY OF LENT MARKED AS PALM SUNDAY FESTIVAL BY PEOPLE
Noyan Tapan
March 12, 2008
YEREVAN, MARCH 12, NOYAN TAPAN. Every year the last but one Sunday of
Lent is marked as Palm Sunday by the Armenian people: this year the
festival will be celebrated on March 16. According to the tradition,
young couples uproot newly sprouted willows in the midnight of
Saturday, then decorate the whole church with the branches of the
willow and put a great heap in the center of the church. While the
young decorate the church, it is gradually being filled with people:
girls, women and young people with festive appearance.
On the day of the Palm Sunday people change their winter clothes with
spring ones, young girls come to church with flowers on that day.
In a number of places of Armenia seven fragrant flowers and grasses
are put into water in that night, which, in conviction of people,
becomes more powerful during the night. The water, with which they
wash in the morning, is called "Yotnius". After all this the clergyman
comes, and the bells of the church ring. People surround the willows,
by lighting the candles brought by them fix them on the branches
and the ceremony of blessing the branches of the willows starts in
the midnight under the bright light of hundreds of candles. On that
day, for the first time during the whole Lent, they speak about
engagements. Impromptu engagements are taking place in the midnight.
At the end of the church service everybody is trying to take as many
blessed willow branches as possible. Coming out of the church with lit
candles, people hurry to cemetery, fix the candles on the gravestone
of the dead and take the blessed willow branches home. Power of
"charkhapan" and plenty is attributed to those branches and thus
they are used for numerous occasions during the year until the next
Palm Sunday.