Bulgarian folk rituals at Shrovetide

22nd February.

   Shrovetide is a spring festivity that comes on the eve of Easter Lent. But traditional Bulgarian rituals have it that the holiday opened the previous week.

    Pardon is the most common custom related to the Shrovetide festivities and in particular the first Sunday before Lent. It is a very simple and yet symbolic ritual. Family members ask each other pardon for any misunderstandings, invectives or quarrels that might have occurred during the previous year. It is a strictly family occasion on which everyone shakes hands and relations are rectified. More interestingly, the tradition has it that one asks and gives pardon even if one has not come into open conflicts with anybody. The meaning of the ritual is to restore mutual respect among the members of the family. Of course, the younger are always the first to ask forgiveness from their elders. The married sons and daughters go to their in-laws and parents, whereas the newly-weds go to the home of their best man and maid. In the event of a very large family the visits could last the whole week until Shrovetide. On the last evening of the week the family gathers for the ritual dinner, where in an atmosphere of forgiveness and merrymaking records are set straight.
    The dishes are vegetarian as the holiday comes right before Easter Lent. The Bulgarian name of the holiday, Sirnitza or Sirni zagovezni, i.e. the first Sunday before Lent, comes from the Bulgarian word for cheese (‘sirene’). It is also the occasion to prepare the traditional Bulgarian cheese-and-egg pie. But the most delicious item on the menu is the white halvah. It is not just a dessert, but also the object of a special ritual. A lump of white halvah is tied to one end of a long red thread, whose other end is fixed to the ceiling. The children gather under this pendulum of sorts and try to catch the lump of halvah with their teeth without using their hands. In some regions people use a boiled egg instead. Anyway, when the first child bites the lump of halvah or the egg, the empty thread is set to fire, and the elderly use this to make predictions about the new year. They can foretell any marriages in the family, or fertility in the fields, or even their own health by the way the flame moves along the thread. Even though it is related to the Christian calendar, the first Sunday before Lent is in fact a popular holiday related to the traditional beliefs about spring and nature’s reawakening.
    There are two more folklore customs closely associated with Shrovetide festivities: the lighting of bonfires and the masquerade games. According to popular belief, a fire lit up on the ground had the power to rekindle the heavenly fire, i.e. the Sun, after its winter weakness. In some regions bachelors cast arrows, whose heads are lit up, while in other places people burn stacks of straw placed inside a basket, which is then furled in circles. In most cases the huge bonfires were usually lit up on top of a hill. The people used to gather around them uttering words of omen and blessing for health, love and a good farming year. In certain villages the men jump over the bonfires in a belief this will keep them in good health throughout the year.
     Spring masquerade games are another common form of celebration during Shrovetide. The ‘jamal’ holiday typical of North eastern Bulgaria is a showcase in this respect. The essence of the ritual is an acting out of a scene with an imaginary beast, the ‘Jamal’, by a group of masked men. The animal represents a horse or a donkey played by two men hidden under a single blanket. During the act the ‘jamal’ suddenly kicks in the air and falls on the ground dead, but the other men in the group somehow manage to bring it back to life, and there it is again alive and kicking and back in the game. This is a naive way of representing the circle of life with the resurrection of spring opening a new beginning.
    In another type of masquerade games the participants drive away evil spirits with a deafening noise produced by huge bells the players carry around their waists. These are the so-called mummers, whose rituals also include a performance of a symbolic furrowing of the fields as the opening of the new farming season. At the end of the act the leader of the mummers spells out a word or two of blessing and the ritual ends. The Shrovetide festivities in the Bulgarian lands are not unique. They have their analogues in the celebrations of fire and masquerade games in other European nations during Shrovetide and the welcoming of spring.

Shrovetide Pageants 

   All seven days of the week, leading to the great Easter fast, abound in traditional rituals and masses of superstition that have entailed the figurative name allotted to each individual day: Mongrel Monday, Black Tuesday, Wry Wednesday, Mad-as-a-hatter Thursday, Crooked Friday. The First Sunday before Lent brings a glorious conclusion to wintry pageantry. The mummeries in Eastern Bulgaria seem to be the most popular tradition observed over the week. With springtime just around the corner, the masks and ritual dances of the mummers are designed to “ wake up” both Earth and humans to a fresh lease of life and procreation. The message, however, is put across by way of fearsome and comic characters.
   In certain parts of Bulgaria the mummers would appear in the guise of sinister “ birds”, sporting, further to their plumage, thick hides and horns. In other parts mummers would have terrifying countenances with goggling eyes, beaks of noses and gaping mouths. Disguised in a similar manner, dozens of men folk would march along the streets of their village. Each mummer has a belt, fitted with an assortment of bells, coming in all sizes and makes, tied to their waist. The din, produced by the clanking bells, is believed to scare away any winter leftovers and quicken all the Earth’s life-giving juices. The jumping mummers are believed to challenge planted seeds to grow tall. Unlike farmers, who actually do the well-known farming activities, the mummers just go through the motions of springtime land cultivation and seed-planting at a specially-designated spot in the centre of the village.

   They would harness their king, or bride if you want, in the plough to take the place of the proverbial farming bull. The traditional bridal red veil and female dress there is male youngster. The mummers would very often swoop on the bride to overwhelm her in a great show of passion. The groom would be expected to guard her to the best of his abilities. Eventually a cat would come out of the bride’s swollen belly. Then the groom would have to be sent to his death for having failed to safeguard his bride. Just like in a genuine wedding procession, the masked bride and the groom would be accompanied by a best man, a doctor and a whole platoon of parody characters. The characters perform comical sketches on the backdrop of wedding music. The masked procession would make a round of the village, pay a visit to each and every household to bequeath its magic spell for well-being, fecundity and profuse crops over the year.
    In Western Bulgaria, where mummers’ pageants would take place early on in the young New Year, the First Sunday before Lent would take on a somewhat different shape, though basically underpinned by the idea of the springtime revival of Nature. However, the underlying ritualistic substance in this case is that of Fire, the earthly image of the Sun. In some villages they would stake-up huge bonfires. In others single young men would shoot away burning arrows. A still another version of the fire ritual would be for young men to whirl large wicker baskets full of burning straw or lit torches. Superstition has it, that all spots thus illuminated will not be damaged by hail or lightning storms in summer. Those who dare leap over the flames will enjoy robust health down the year.
     There is yet another, very important ritual, observed on the first Sunday before Lent across the country, called “ Pardon”. The name derives from the essence of the ritual, which is about pardoning. This is a strictly family and kin affair, where the younger members of the family and clan would be expected to ask to be pardoned by seniors for sins and errors they have committed unintentionally. The family seniors cannot refuse a pardon, as no family can begin its great Easter fast without a full family reconciliation. As Bulgarian tradition would have it this festive scenario would be acted out at a richly-laid feat table, a cheese cake, boiled eggs, halavah and oil-nut kernels. The peak of the day’s entertainment comes when a circle of children begin to race each other in biting into a piece of egg or halavah, spun in a circle on a long thread, fixed to the ceiling. Eventually a lit match would be taken to thread to tell, by the way the fire progresses across it, the health each member of the family is going to enjoy and what plants are going to issue the best crop.

 

 

Click on thumbnail to return to Festival Calendar