04/17/2025
Clean (Maundy) Thursday
Clean or Maundy Thursday is the last Thursday before Easter. On this day, it is customary to bake pasky and clean the house before the principal days of the Easter week.
There is also a custom to take a lit passion candle (which was held throughout the Thursday service) home after the evening service and draw a cross with the smoke from the fire on the threshold of the door to your house above, “so that evil spirits would pass through the house.”
In folk beliefs, the passion candle had great magical power. It was believed that if a cross on the gate was burned with the flame of a passion candle, a “bad dog” (i.e. an evil spirit that runs around the earth on this evening, assuming this form) would not run into the yard. In addition, such a candle was lit before the icons when a person was attacked by fear, as well as in case of serious illness of people or cattle, during difficult childbirth, and given to the dying. Beekeepers would go to the beekeeper with this candle."
"Clean" Thursday is called because it is the day of spring purification. Before sunset, people traditionally cleaned their houses and barns, swept the yard, and whitewashed tree trunks in the yard, garden, and beyond. The collected garbage, tree branches, and various weeds were burned in the middle of the yard to “cleanse the earth of winter, frost, death, and all evil spirits.”
According to the belief, dirty water after cleaning should not be poured inside the house, because the negative energy of such water can negatively affect future life. Therefore, it is better to pour it out in places where nothing grows, for example, on stones or the road.
In order to get healthy, sick people would bathe long before dawn that day, and pour the water they bathed in on the crossroads, praying to God: “God, give me health in my arms, legs, and a little bit in my stomach.” In the hot water in which mothers bathed their children on Maundy Thursday, they put branches of a consecrated willow tree. It is believed that this water washes away all diseases and heals all wounds.
Cautious people did not leave the house in the morning of this day, and if they were on the road, they avoided the intersection “so that the disease would not catch on.”
On Maundy Thursday, children's hair is cut “so that their hair doesn't fall out and their head doesn't hurt.
In the Kyiv region, Podillia, and the Left Bank, Maundy Thursday is called “Navskyi Easter.” According to ancient folk beliefs, God releases the dead from the “other world” three times a year: the first time on Maundy Thursday, the second time when rye blooms, and the third time on Spas.
