Semen Den (Seed’s Day)

Simon the Ploughman

 February 3rd

    Bulgarians all over the world call this day "Holy Mother" and believe that if a woman wants to have a child, she must give out a "pinched corn bread". How do you prepare a "pinched" bread? With your fingers. With the fingers you make a sign of the cross on the still unbaked bread. The dough is pinched many times, with the thumb and forefinger, and on
the four ends of the cross you put four balls of dough pierced with the spindle. The baked bread is given out at a crossroads. When someone takes the piece of bread he must make a sign of the cross for himself, for the woman that gave him food, and say: This year pinched bread in your hand, next year – dear child in your heart!

       According to the popular calendar this day is considered the beginning of the new economic year and thought to be an agricultural holiday mainly. Before the holiday the peasants take the seeds for the soughing into the church to sanctify them. They put ashes from the tree that they have burnt on the Christmas Eve in the seeds. In the morning on the holiday the women knead wheat dough and make breads for the oxen and the buffaloes that will plough the fields. Small ring-shaped buns are also made and they are put on the cattle's horns. The man that will plough and sough are dressed up for the holiday and the women walk by them and throw embers so that the work could go well. After the first furrow is ploughed the ritual bread is torn into four pieces - the first is thrown in the East, the second is given to the buffaloes, the third is buried in the field and the forth is eaten by the landlord.
      The tradition demands that no one land anything and no one takes anything out of the house on Simeonovden to prevent from the fertility going out of the house.
      It is not allowed to cook, wash or hang out the clothes. If the people that come to the house are good, the harvest will be fertile.
     The walnuts from the trees are usually shaken down on Simeonovden that is why the holiday is sometimes called Simeon (Simon) that shakes down the walnuts.
Church Holiday: Saint Simon Stulpnik know to the Bulgarians as "Simon the ploughman".

 

 

 

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