Blessing grapes

Vaհe H Apelian

This past Sunday, on August 10, 2025, the Holy Trinity Armenian Apostolic Church in Worcester, MA held its annual picnic. The picnic started at 12 pm. Around 2 pm, the blessing of the grapes was done. The religious ceremony is a moving ceremony. After which attendants picked blessed grapes to savior. Armenians henceforth could pick grapes from the vines from their orchards and savior them.

The ceremony once more reminded me of my time, during the summers, in our ancestral village in Keurkune, Kessab. Our maternal grandmother would not let us pick grapes until the church had blessed the grapes, around mid-August at the Աստուածածնայ Տօն- Astvatzazna Feast. 

I had long asked why grapes are blessed. I posed the question again to the all-knowing AI driven internet. It directed me to the Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church, which said the following: “we can say that the Blessing of the Grapes is a symbolic celebration of the fruitfulness of the earth. Grapes are one of the oldest cultivated plants in the world. Noah planted a vineyard immediately after disembarking from the Ark (Genesis, Chapter 9) in Nakhichevan, Armenia. And, of course, the wine of the Divine Liturgy comes from grapes.” You may read the who text in the link posted below.

But I have my own interpretation and it downed on me thanks to that farmer in Columbus, OH. A section of Columbus, OH, in common parlance, is known as the Italian neighborhood. The neighborhood naturally has changed over the years, but a resident had held on their piece of property as a small orchard where I used to stop on Friday afternoons, during the summers, on my way home to Cincinnati, OH for the weekend. Once I got into a conversation with him. He pointed out to me clusters of pin size grapes that were growing on the vines, and he said something to the affect that it is a miracle, for the grapes come onto being all by themselves.

Most fruit bearing trees flower first, which are pollinated to bear fruits. The grape vines appear not to flower and the grapes appear to come into being all by themselves. Most cultivated grape varieties are self-fruitful, that is to they are self-pollinating. But, the fact of the matter is that grape vines flower too, but the flowers are  invisible to the naked eye. Hence to that farmer in that Italian section of Columbus OH,  a miracle was unfolding right in front of his eyes. Grapes were coming onto the vines all by themselves, much Jesus Christ. Mary, the mother of Jesus, the church claims, was conceived without the “original sin”. In fact, the blessing of the grapes is done during the Feast of Assumption, which which the Armenian Apostolic Church celebrates on the Sunday closed to August 15, celebrating the Virgin Mary who was taken, in body and in soul, into heaven at the end of her earthly life. 

The Armenians call the feast Աստուածածնայ Տօն- Astvatzazna Feast, feastng for the one who gave birth to Jesus Christ and was being taken to heaven, in body and in soul. For the Kessab Armenians, it is its major feas and is celebrated with davul and zurna, circle dance and savoring of freshly prepared harissa in large kettles, from animal meat, mostly sheep, maybe goat too at one time, freshy sacrificed for the feast and is observed by all the denominations,  Apostolic, Catholic and Evangelical.  

Link: BLESSING OF THE GRAPES: https://armenianprelacy.org/2024/08/15/blessing-of-the-grapes/#:~:text=Certainly%2C%20we%20can%20say%20that,9)%20in%20Nakhichevan%2C%20Armenia.