The Celebration of Hampartsoom

A variety of popular games, contests, and circular group dances were the ornaments of the feast of Hampartsoom.  So it seems evident that while Hampartsoom takes place around the Ascension of Christ, the two have little other connection.  We do not know what the pagan name of this feast was.

Hampartsoom was the gem of all the Armenian folk festivals, as it was entirely dedicated to youth and generally to fertility.  There were many ways of calling upon the magic of love and fertility.  The foremost was collection of flowers to form a bouquet for each family.  The largest of the clusters was placed in sacred water and given the name Dzaghgamer. *  In a container they occasionally placed husks of wheat that reminded one of the plant fits presented to the goddess Anahid.

Dzaghgamer and the sacred liquid in the container were connected with the essence of water, Nar and Asdghig.  This explains why women secretly bathed at night before daybreak on Thursday on the eve of the Hampartsoom so they would get pregnant.  Men who witnessed the alleged embrace of stars on that night united with their wives so that they could conceive boys. 

During the same night, women and girls, secretly withdrawing from the men, went around silently, gathering within a container sacred water and sand from seven fountains.  These secret wanderings as well as the secret bathing were probably connected with those rituals of fertility that were intended to eliminate barrenness.

Hear a traditional Hampartsoom song

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* According to some scholars, Dzaghgamer symbolizes the virgin St. Barbara.  Under the name Dzaghgamer we should understand the goddesses Asdghig and Anahid.  Barbara was substituted for them during the Christian period with the purpose to commit them to oblivion.  A young girl was veiled on the day of the feast, and designated as "daughter-in-law," she determined the love life of young people by drawing lots, thus symbolizing Asdghig and Anahid.