Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Happy St. Andrew's Day!

So these are my current earrings options for St. Andrew's Day, celebrated on November 30.













St. Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland. I have some celtic knot earrings I got in Scotland, some Charles Rennie Macintosh earrings recently brought to me by a Scottish friend, and some dinosaur earrings that I choose to think of as Loch Ness Monster earrings.

But St. Andrew is also the patron saint of Greece, Romania, and Russia. His feast day is also celebrated in the area of Germany/ Austria/ Poland in some interesting ways. I robbed this below from Wiki:

In parts of Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Romania, superstitious belief exists that the night before St. Andrew's Day is specially suitable for magic that reveals a young woman's future husband or that binds a future husband to her. Many related customs exist: for example, the pouring of hot lead into water (in Poland, one usually pours hot wax from a candle through a key hole into cold water), divining the future husband's profession from the shape of the resulting piece (related divinations using molten metals are still popular in Germany on Hogmanay). In some areas in Austria, young women would drink wine and then perform a spell, called Andreasgebet (Saint Andrew's prayer), while nude and kicking a straw bed. This was supposed to magically attract the future husband. Yet another custom is to throw a clog over one's shoulder: if it lands pointing to the door, the woman will get married in the same year.

In some parts of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, young women would write down the names of potential husbands on little pieces of paper and stick these into little pieces of dough, called Halusky. When cooked, the first one to float to the surface of the water would reveal the name of their future husband.

In Poland, some women put pieces of paper (on which they have written potential husbands) under the pillow and first thing in the morning they take one out, which allegedly reveals their future husband.

In Romania, it is customary for young women to put 41 grains of wheat beneath their pillow before they go to sleep, and if they dream that someone is coming to steal their grains that means that they are going to get married next year. Also in some other parts of the country the young women light a candle from the Easter and bring it, at midnight, to a fountain. They ask St. Andrew to let them glimpse their future husband. St. Andrew is also the national saint of Romanians and Romanian Orthodox Church.

Alas, I do not have earrings made of 41 grains of wheat. There's always next year!