important for Belarusian catholics, for whom this day became a symbol of memory of the victims of the communist regime. On October 30, 1988, the first mass gathering was organized, not by the authorities but by activists, to commemorate the victims in 20th century Belarus. The authorities of that time, which did not like it, dispersed the assembly with the help of the militsiya. The dziady ceased to be a day off in 1996, when the holiday began to be associated with the democratic opposition. Nowadays, hundreds of thousands of Belarusians are taking leave on demand to honor their ancestors on November 1 and 2. In 2017, the President of the Episcopal Conference of Belarus, Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, said that the dziady should be a day off from work, instead of the October Revolution on November 7. He also supported the Internet petition for granting the status of a day off from work to grandfathers, which has now collected over 2500 signatures. Dziady and Christianity Christianity, on the one hand, fought against pagan rituals, successfully banning them, and on the other hand, it tried to adapt some of them in an attempt to christianize them. In the case of the dziady, both the Catholic and the Orthodox Church tried to marginalize and then eliminate pagan festivals by introducing into their squares (at the same or similar moments of the annual cycle) Christian festivals and practices (respectively, the counselor subots and the suffragettes). A different strategy was adopted in the Uniate Church, which obliged the priests to go with the rural population to their dziady and pray the Angelus, the Hail Mary and other christian prayers. In some regions, the Uniate priests celebrated special processions at the cemeteries, during which they consecrated individual graves and collected food and money left on them. Gallery See also Samhain Veneration of the dead Day of the Dead Halloween References Bibliography External links Belarusian culture Festivals in Lithuania Lithuanian culture Polish culture Slavic culture Russian culture Ukrainian culture Observances honoring the dead Slavic holidays October observances November observances