There are special days in the church calendar on which the departed are remembered. These dates in the Christian tradition are called ecumenical parental Saturdays. On May 30, the Church commemorates all departed Orthodox Christians on Trinity Parental Saturday.
The Church proclaims to a person that the memory of our deceased loved ones is not only a religious duty and duty of every Christian. This, first of all, should be a moral need of the human soul, a manifestation of love for those people who have finished their earthly journey.
The Church defines the main components of the commemoration of the departed, which consists in praying for the dead, performing deeds of mercy, helping others in memory of the deceased loved ones. We must not forget about the duty of keeping the graves of the deceased in proper cleanliness. That is why the tradition of visiting cemeteries on parental days is an important component of the memory of deceased relatives.
The believing Christian needs to distinguish superstition from the real Orthodox tradition. The wicked customs that have penetrated into our lives include the commemoration of the dead with alcohol in cemeteries, leaving glasses of vodka and cigarettes on the graves. A believer must understand that the burial place of our neighbors is sacred, therefore, you need to behave piously at the cemetery.
In the church tradition, there is no concept of remembrance of the departed with alcohol, because the very term "remembrance" indicates the need for prayerful memory of the deceased. The practice of leaving food on the graves of the dead does not make sense, because the dead no longer need material food. Watering graves with vodka is blasphemous. All these customs entered the life of the people in the Soviet period as a substitute for the main meaning of Orthodox commemoration - the prayerful memory of the dead.
A believer needs to know that there was no place for such wicked traditions in pre-revolutionary Russia, therefore it is wrong to say that "it has always been this way." Therefore, there is no need to continue to adhere to such customs.
