August 19 - Apple saved
 

Transfiguration of Our Lord. Apple saved.

In the Russian folk tradition festival of the Transfiguration (August 19) called the second or Apple Savior, because his celebrated simultaneously with the ripening of apples.

Western Christians celebrate this day, August 6, and the Orthodox - August 19, new style, which corresponds to August 6 on the Julian calendar.

In Russia especially for this day apple carts transported intact, and each more or less well-off people considered it his duty to distribute benefits to the poor and the sick. Before that day was not supposed to eat apples and all garden vegetables, except cucumbers. In the Orthodox calendar, a holiday falls on the Dormition Lent, but since that day, allowed to eat apples and fruit, the consecration of which is held at the end of the festive liturgy.

Custom to consecrate the fruits - the ancient, back to the VIII century. The basis for the establishment of the custom to consecrate the fruits it is August 6 (Julian calendar) was that on the east by this time keep up the fruits, the most important of which - the ears of corn and grapes - are brought to the temple for a blessing and a sign of gratitude to God for getting those fruits for food rights, as well as direct them to the sacrament of the Eucharist.
In the Russian Church in those places where the grapes do not grow or not ripen at this time, the Feast of Transfiguration of Our Lord blessed apples. At the same apples as a substitute for a grape, are sanctified by prayer "at the consecration of the first-fruit vegetables (fruit)."

"The Sixth of August to the old way ..."
 

I always remember this day ... I will not quote extract - completely, in my opinion, so well read ...

Boris Pasternak
August

As promised, no cheating,
Penetrated early in the morning sun
Saffron stripe braid
From curtains to sofas.

It covered the hot ohroyu
Nearby forest, home of the village,
My bed pillow wet
And the edge of the wall behind the bookshelf.

I thought, for what reason
Slightly moistened with a pillow.
I dreamed that on my departure
We walked through the woods you followed one another.

You were the crowd, apart and in pairs,
Suddenly, someone remembered that it was
The sixth of August to the old way,
Transfiguration.

Usually the light without a flame
Adhere to this day with Tabor,
And autumn, as a clear sign
By itself attracts the eyes.

And you've gone through a shallow, beggarly,
Transparent, vibrant alder
In the ginger-red forest cemetery,
Burning with as printed cake.

With hushed its vertices
Sky side by side, it is important
And the voices of cock
Echoed further prolonged.

The forest official zemlemersheyu
It was a death among the churchyard,
Looking at my face, deceased,
To dig a hole for me to grow.

Was all feel physically
The calm voice of someone close.
Then the first voice my prophetic
Sounded, untouched by decay:

"Goodbye, blue Transfiguration
And second gold of the Saviour.
Soften last caress feminine
I bitterness fateful hour.

Goodbye, bezvremenschiny years.
Bye, the abyss of humiliation
Challenging a woman!
I - your field of battle.

Farewell, straightened wing span,
Flight arbitrary persistence
And the image of the world, manifested in a word,
And creativity and chudotvorstvo. "

1953