Russian means funny. Laughing, joyful, smiling means living, full of energy, capable of transmitting life-giving forces to the world around. Since ancient times, laughter accompanied birth, ritual laughter was resurrected, fertilized, "fertilized", "plowed" the soil.
Christmas dressing, Maslenitsa festivities, the curling of a Trinity birch tree, jumping over the Ivanokupalsk fires, the funeral of Kostroma - all these ritual actions were invariably accompanied by laughter, fun, revelry, possessing magical, producing properties.
Sardonic laugh
The notorious sardonic laughter, which we perceive today as cruel, gloating, is the laughter that once accompanied the murder of old people in Sardinia. However, the reason for this laughter was not anger at all: laughter turned death into birth, personified the triumph of new life, the continuity of being.
In Russia, there was no pronounced ritual laughter at funerals as such, but laughter was certainly accompanied by customs that imitated funerals or the murder of certain anthropomorphic symbols. So on Christmastide they played "umruna", "the deceased", "death": the person who portrayed the dead was laid in a coffin or on boards and, under loud laughter, they mourned, sang, parody, distorting the church rite with a disguised priest and a deacon, with a censer in the form of a clay pot.
The whole world went to Shrovetide, often imitating a funeral procession, to burn or tore apart the Shrovetide effigy, went with songs, dances, and whooping. In the Rusal or Semitic week preceding Trinity, the mermaids were seen off: a girl or a stuffed animal depicting a mermaid was taken out into the field, which was supposed to contribute to fertility, since the mermaid, a water creature, transferred the moisture necessary to the fields, and this favored the harvest.
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So they saw off the mermaid, flirting with her, tickling, grabbing, some by the shirt, some by the hand: "Mermaid, mermaid, tickle me!", Accompanied by games, laughter, singing, or they could put the mermaid on a stretcher and arrange a funeral, screaming, lamentations and fun interspersed. On Trinity, a birch tree curled, decorated or dressed up by a girl was carried to be thrown into the field or drowned in the river, before stripping, breaking off. And again, it could not do without singing, round dances, ritual laughter, necessary for the life of humans, animals, plants.
Similar stuffed animals, made both on the day of Ivan Kupala and on Kostroma, were also destroyed, torn apart, and the remains fertilized with laughter were scattered and buried in the fields. These symbols-dolls, stuffed animals, underdeveloped in the deities of vegetation, fertility, thanks to the life-giving power of laughter, were revived, resurrected, grew in cereals, giving harvest, life.
So, remembering the deceased on Radunitsa, at first they lamented and howled, turning to their ancestors-parents, hoping for their help, the assistance of the forces of nature, and then they laughed uncontrollably, resurrecting the deceased in fertility.
Not for fun, but life for
The nature of laughter is rich and varied. Laughing, a person is able to express different, sometimes opposite emotions and moods: from cruel and satirical to light humorous. So, ridiculing, making senseless the clergy and their attributes, thereby showing their hostility, the people's celebrations imitated, parodied the church funeral service. Exposing, emphasizing the opposition of the spiritual and the physical, emphasizing their discrepancy with parody, irreconcilable satire, the folk fun was likened to a colorful procession, a carnival. So the murderous malevolent laughter gave birth to joy.
Joy, laughter is always life, laughter accompanies and even causes birth. The prohibition of laughter is imposed on the fairy-tale hero who finds himself in another world, “beyond the distant lands,” that is, into the world of death, because by laughing the hero can pass himself off as alive among the dead. The living laugh, the dead don't. The dead can only kill, take him to the kingdom of death, the living, on the contrary, is able to revive, resurrect, because he has life-giving laughter, fun, joy.
In Yakut myths, laughter caused the goddess of childbirth and pregnancy, it was laughter in the primitive consciousness that produced birth. At the early stages of the tribal society, the main means of subsistence was hunting, during which they again laughed: killing the beast, they laughed, thereby reviving it to a new life, and therefore providing themselves with new prey. With the advent of agriculture, these ideas were transferred to the area of agrarian cults.
Laughter helped the earth, which was conceived as a female body, to give birth, to be released from the burden. The ancient Slavs relied on laughter as a magical force that helps to raise and strengthen the productive natural forces: the harvest of bread, herbs, fruits, the multiplication of animals. The louder and more cheerful the laughter during the spring-summer celebrations, the richer, more abundant the offspring that provides a person with life.