Such are the festivals treated in the second and last part of this
thesis. Is it true that they form a vehicle of expression for the
national sentiment created by the large mass of social material
of which the legends of Part One are a considerable and important
portion? Again it will be necessary to remind ourselves of the
chief sentiments included within Armenian national sentiment, i.e.,
the sentiment of loyalty to the church, the sentiment of reverence
amounting almost to worship for the ancient glory of the nation,
and the sentiment of love for the country. It would be ridiculous
to suppose that every festival was designed to give expression to
some one of these sentiments. But that these sentiments are given
very clear, very real outward expression in the great majority of the
celebrations described, should be so evident at this point as to make
further exposition unnecessary. In the summer Festival of Vartavar,
the spring Festival of Mihr, Vartan's Day, and in the consecration
of the Katholikos there is the proud and reverent looking back to the
times when Armenia was an independent nation; the festival ceremonies
of the third group, baptism, betrothal, marriage, and funeral, though
they are not positive expressions of the sentiments of loyalty to the
church, are yet so completely interwoven with the church and dependent
upon it that one is compelled to regard the feeling as something to be
taken for granted, while in most of the festivals of the second group,
Christmas, Easter, Maundy Thursday, and the Blessing of the Grapes
especially, the sentiment is given a more positive expression. As for
the sentiment of love for the country, that is identified especially
with Vartavar and Vartan's Day. It is evident, therefore, that each
of these festivals and festival-ceremonies forms a medium more or
less evident as the case may be, for the expression of one or more or
all of the sentiments that make up Armenian national sentiment. Some
of them are not to be classified as readily as this, as for example,
the festival of Ascension morning, or Fortune-Telling Day, in which
the dominant sentiment is one of romantic love, or in the Blessing
of the Water, where the desire for a gain in health or wealth is the
main psychological fact.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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