March 1 — Maremyana-Kikimora leads the day. And we praise Yarila!

March 1st is a very remarkable day in the national calendar. Another one of those in which pagan and Christian principles are closely and intricately intertwined. According to religious tradition, on the first day of spring, Saint Mariamne, the sister of the Apostle Philip, canonized in the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, is remembered with a kind word. But in Rus’, the people “reinterpreted” the righteous woman (even ethnographers don’t really know how it happened), changed her name to Maremyan and associated it with the pagan mythical character Kikimora. An entity that was feared and represented in different ways. Some said that she was a crooked and rather ugly old woman. Others believed that she was a young, black-eyed and white-faced girl, while others even believed that she was a little girl or a nimble old man. There was also a legend that Maremyana-Kikimora was the wife of a brownie and, accordingly, the mistress of the house. With a difficult character: she harms her family in small ways, scares them with various sounds, annoys the children, but sometimes Kikimora helps, warning them of misfortunes. In Rus’ they also believed that the traditional frosts and strong winds on March 1 were the work of Maremyana.

But no matter how angry Maremyana-Kikimora may be, March 1 is the first day of spring. And the people were extremely happy about this fact. It was believed that from now on nature would certainly begin to recover from the cold. In this regard, the pagan god of fertility, Yarila, was glorified.

• The wind has increased at night — expect heavy rainfall and warming.
• The first day of spring is warm, which means it will still get colder.
• Crows caw loudly on March 1 — it will soon get colder.
• If you throw a branch on the snow and it falls through, then you can wait for warmer weather. If she remains lying on the ground, the cold will continue for some time.
• Water is splashing on the ice of a reservoir — wait for warm days.
• Thick fog means the summer will be stormy.

Name days are celebrated today by: Daniil, Ilya, Makar, Pavel, Pamphilus, Porfiry, Samuel, Juliana.