Insanity as a Spectator Sport.

My wife told me about this event two years ago, but I guess you really have to be there to believe it.

While living in NJ, I remember many times seeing the "Polar Bears" taking an icy swim in the Atlantic on NYC TV. I seemed to remember that it was Russian emigrees who partook of this activity. But on TV, it always seem to be just a few "kooks" doing it. And for one reason or another, I don't remember any mention of a religious aspect to this activity. Maybe TV didn't like the idea of associating religion and swimming in icy weather. Might shed a negative light on religion, I guess. The religious event is the Russian Orthodox Epiphany (probably Ukrainian Orthodox too). The temperature Saturday, a disappointingly mild 26F. Two years ago it was -6F.

I'm sure that in NYC it probably was a rather small happening. Not here...





Setting up the fireworks:





And the religious aspects:



Later, President Yushenko came and took a dip in the icy water himself. Don't have a picture of that, though. Anything to appeal to the religious voters...

Then later, a line, reportedly 3 hours long, to get blessed water.



Can't show you all the pictures, because there's a surprising number of naked people. Not just men, either.

...it's more that the "Polar Bear" swims (held on New Year's Day) don't have a religious aspect to them -- unless you consider some people's worship of machismo a religious quest. What you're seeing here is a religious "folk ritual" unconnected to New Year's. In Eastern Orthodoxy, the Epiphany commemorates not just the visit of the Magi, but also Christ's baptism in the river Jordan at the beginning of his ministry. So, in some Orthodox lands, believers "re-enact" the baptism by jumping into the nearest river or lake...and it just so happens that, in said Orthodox lands (unlike the Middle East where the original event occurred), it's generally freezing at that time of year.

I know of one Orthodox congregation in my area that originated in the influx of Russian miners in a small town on the north slope of Mount Rainier. The congregation has since moved their main church to Tacoma, but kept the old church as a chapel for special occasions.

(Here's a photo of said old church, obviously taken during a warmer time of the year.)



In any event, they don't jump in the water for Epiphany, but they do move their service for that day to the old church, and part of the service involves going out to a mountain stream near the church, collecting water from that stream, blessing it, and sprinkling it on the members of the congregation. Not as cold, but a similar symbolic act to mark the baptism of Jesus.

BTW, from my experience, "Polar Bear" swims around here don't seem to have any particular ethnic makeup to them. When I lived back east, they seemed to be primarily populated by people of British descent, who believed that a dip in the "bracing" water was a good way to practice self-discipline and the proverbial "stiff (I would say 'very stiff', considering it's probably frozen) upper lip."