There are special days in the church calendar on which the dead are commemorated. These dates in the Christian tradition are called universal parental Saturdays. On May 30, the Church on Trinity Parental Saturday celebrates all the deceased Orthodox Christians.
The Church proclaims to man that the memory of our deceased loved ones is not only a religious duty and duty of every Christian. First of all, this should be the moral need of the human soul, a manifestation of love for those people who have completed their earthly journey.
The Church determines the main components of the commemoration of the dead, consisting in prayer for the dead, doing mercy, helping others in memory of the deceased loved ones. We must not forget about the duty of maintaining the burial of the dead in proper cleanliness. That is why the tradition of visiting cemeteries on parental days is an important component of the memory of deceased relatives.
A believing Christian needs to distinguish superstition from a true Orthodox tradition. Wicked customs that have infiltrated our lives include commemoration in the cemeteries of the deceased with alcohol, and leaving glasses of vodka and cigarettes on graves. The believer must understand that the place of burial of our neighbors is sacred, so you need to behave piously in the cemetery.
In the church tradition, there is no concept of remembrance of the deceased with alcohol, because the term "remembrance" itself indicates the need for a prayer memory of the dead. The practice of leaving food on the graves of the deceased does not make sense, because the deceased no longer need material food. It’s sacrilegious to pour vodka over the graves. All these customs entered people's life in the Soviet period as a substitute for the main meaning of the Orthodox commemoration - the prayer memory of the departed.
A believer needs to know that such unholy traditions did not have a place in pre-revolutionary Russia, therefore it is wrong to say that "it has always been like that." In this regard, there is no need to continue to adhere to such customs.
