40 days to arrive, 40 days to leave: How Armenian culture honors life’s most important moments
Earlier this year, I gave birth to my fourth child. My baby and I entered “karasunk,” the traditional Armenian 40-day postpartum period during which mother and newborn remain close to home, sheltered from the outside world.
During that time, a close childhood friend died of cancer. Because we were still in our karasunk, I could not participate in the gatherings and rituals surrounding his death. He, too, now had a karasunk.
As an Armenian studies scholar, I had long known that the same word describes traditions during the first 40 days after both birth and death. But inhabiting one karasunk while grieving another made me see that parallel differently. Why should arriving in the world and leaving it be marked by the same measure of time?
The answer, I have come to think, lies not simply in the number 40, but in what those 40 days are meant to do.
Why 40?
Armenian culture has been deeply shaped by Christianity since 301, when it was declared the state religion – making Armenia the first Christian kingdom. The Armenian Apostolic Church developed as a distinct ancient Christian tradition and is today part of the Oriental Orthodox family of churches. For much of Armenian history, the church has been not only a religious institution but also a major pillar of Armenian cultural and communal life.
A scene by Toros Roslin, an Armenian manuscript illustrator who lived in the 13th century, depicts a baby Jesus being presented in the Temple. Walters Art Museum via Wikimedia Commons.
And the number 40 – “karasun,” in Armenian – is everywhere in Christian sacred time. Forty days after Jesus’ birth, the Bible says, he was presented at the Temple in Jerusalem, in keeping with Jewish tradition. Forty days separate his Resurrection from his Ascension into heaven. Lent, the period of spiritual preparation leading up to Easter, recalls his 40 days of fasting in the wilderness.
The number is embedded in Armenian Church rites as well. The church celebrates Christ’s Presentation at the Temple 40 days after Christmas and his Ascension 40 days after Easter.
But Christianity is only one layer of the story behind Armenian birth and death rituals. Folk traditions also preserve older beliefs about the vulnerability of people moving from one stage of life to another and the protections needed to carry them safely through.
40 days to arrive
A baby is born. For the next 40 days, mother and child remain somewhat apart from the world that the newborn has just entered.
Traditionally, the mother does not leave the home. Visitors are limited, and the newborn is kept close.
These are not simply 40 days of rest, but protection. Older Armenian beliefs imagined that supernatural beings could threaten the woman after childbirth or harm her baby. A prayer book might be placed under the mattress, a bead fastened to the child, or a needle or another metal object kept nearby to ward off evil spirits.
For 40 days, their world contracts. And then it opens.
A family celebrates their baby’s karasunk ceremony in church, 40 days after birth. Edita Pogosian
The end of karasunk is not simply a date on the calendar. It is marked through rituals of cleansing and renewal. Ethnographic research from northwest Armenia, published in 2024, describes people bathing the baby while reciting prayers and blessings. One account describes pouring 40 handfuls of water, each accompanied by good wishes; another describes pouring water 40 times over the newborn’s head using an eggshell. Rose petals and gold are sometimes added to the bathwater.
Then it is time to emerge. In one late 19th-century account, first the cradle is carried outside. Then the baby. Finally, the mother. After weeks of enclosure, they are brought into the sunlight.
The transition culminates when mother and child are presented at church, echoing Christ’s presentation at the Temple. The protected period has ended; they can reenter ordinary life.
40 days to leave
The baby was born 40 days earlier, but birth did not complete their arrival. Similarly, when someone dies, the funeral takes place and the body is buried – but death does not complete their departure. Nor do their loved ones immediately return to ordinary life.
For 40 days, mourning restructures their everyday rhythms. A photograph of the deceased is prominently displayed in the home. Men in some communities stop shaving, while women may remove their jewelry. Celebrations, music and entertainment are avoided. In some communities, even bathing, laundry, cooking and lighting a fire in the home of the deceased were once prohibited during the initial mourning period. The bereaved withdraw from ordinary activities, while relatives and neighbors gather around and bring food.
Forty days after a death, loved ones gather for the requiem, a special set of prayers for the deceased.Kseniia Ivanova/iStock via Getty Images Plus
Then comes the 40th day. Family and community gather for a worship service and a requiem, a special service of prayers for the deceased, traditionally followed by prayers at the grave site. Remembrance does not end; special prayers are offered on the first anniversary of the death. But the intensive 40-day period of mourning has reached its boundary.
The time in between
Put the two passages beside each other – birth to life, life to death – and a pattern emerges.
At birth, ordinary life contracts around a mother and newborn before opening outward again. At death, ordinary life contracts around the bereaved, as they adjust to life without their loved one – whose own journey, in Armenian folk belief, is still unfolding.
In both cases, people occupy an in-between state: An old way of life has ended, but a new one has not yet fully begun. Anthopologists call this condition “liminality.” French ethnographer Arnold van Gennep introduced the concept in the early 20th century and described rites of passage as having three stages: separation, transition and, finally, incorporation, when people reenter society in a new role.
Armenian life-cycle rituals follow this pattern remarkably closely, offering a protected span of time around experiences that otherwise appear to happen in an instant. Traditionally, a karasunk was observed not only for birth and deaths but also for newlyweds and even for newly ordained priests.
Karasunk is not simply counting out the 40 days after something happens. It is the 40 days while something is still happening: Bodies are washed, homes are left, churches are entered, prayers are said. Only then is someone’s passage from one state to another complete.
Experiencing a birth while mourning a death has made that logic newly tangible to me. My child had been born. My friend had died. And yet, in both cases, something was still in motion.
Birth and death happen in a moment. Passage takes time. Armenian tradition gives that passage a name: karasunk.
This article is dedicated to the memory of Hrach Mkrtumyan, the author’s close childhood friend who died earlier this year.
