Trndez

A candle, and then a fire

The Armenian Apostolic Church keeps the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ to the Temple on 14 February — forty days after Armenian Christmas, which falls on 6 January, so the count lands where it lands. The celebration, though, belongs to the evening before. On 13 February, after the evening service, a priest lights a candle at the altar, carries it out, and sets light to a bonfire in the courtyard; at the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin the Grand Sacristan does it, and the flame is passed to the congregation as the light and wisdom of Christ. An Andastan service blesses the four corners of the world, and the seminarians sing.

Then people jump over the fire. Couples go hand in hand, and the belief attached to it is about love, strength and children; single people jump too, for luck or for a beginning. The name most people use, Trndez, is older than the feast it now sits on. The tourism board and the church both say the same thing in different words — this was a fire and a sun rite before Armenia was Christian, and the church took it over rather than putting it out.

The day of the newlyweds

On the 14th, after the Divine Liturgy, a blessing is offered for couples married in the past year. His Holiness Karekin II proclaimed the day the Day of Blessing for Newlyweds, and the Mother See invites the year's couples to Etchmiadzin for it; the same service is held in churches everywhere else. If you are in Armenia in mid-February this is the thing to see, and it is the reason the fire the night before is so full of people in their twenties.

What is eaten

Around the fire there are sweets, dried fruit and nuts, and pokhindz, made from roasted and ground wheat. Tables are laid outside the church wall. Visitors are generally handed something within a few minutes of arriving.

Where to be

The biggest gatherings are at the large churches — the cathedral of St Gregory the Illuminator in Yerevan is the one the tourism board names — but the tone of the evening is better in a town or a village, where the fire is the one fire and everyone in the district is standing around it.