In Latin the word "Aprilis" comes from "aperire" which means open, in the sense that April opens the doors for Spring. Very often you can also see that April is called "colorful" in the folk lexicon.

 

11 April

Holiday: Lazarovden (lazzar-off-dehn) (St. Lazarus’ Day)
Nameday: Lazar
Remind me

Lazarovden or Lazaritza comes on the Saturday before Palm Sunday and a week before Easter. Old people believe that Lazarus is the master of woods and bushes and helps people in clearing land for sowing. That is why in folklore Lazarus carries an axe. Lazarovden is connected with a ritual called lazaruvane, a spring ritual for young girls. Since in Thrace this ritual is performed on the next day, read more about it in the next paragraph.

The name Lazar comes from Eleazar ‘God helps’.

 

12 April

Holiday: Tzvetnitza (tzvet-nee-tza) (Palm Sunday)
Nameday: Kalina, Violeta, Bozhura, Vurban, Tzvetan, Tzvetana, Kamelia, Nevena, Margarita, Lilyana, Yavor, Yasen
Remind me

On this day (also called Vrabnitza, i.e. willow) young girls perform the lazaruvane ritual. The legend tells that people organized an yearly fair in a small village in Thrace. One day, a lass named Ruzha, from a village nearby, set out to visit the fair with her mother and father. After walking for some time the girl felt thirsty and asked her father's permission to go to the Dragon's well and drink some water. “Don’t go," said the father, "Wait until we get to the village! This is a bad place.” But the girl didn’t listen to him and went to the well. As she bent down to drink water, a dragon came out and asked her for her to marry him. “You will be rich, very rich,” he said. But Ruzha ran away frightened, caught up with her parents and continued to the fair without telling them what happened. At the fair, all other girls were singing but Ruzha looked sad – she was thinking about the dragon’s proposal. She was not sure if she did the correct thing because she wanted to be rich and live in a palace. When the fair ended, she left her parents and went back to the same well, saw the dragon, married him and and started living in the dragon’s palace. Many years passed. Ruzha felt more homesick as the days passed by and decided to asked the dragon to let her visit her family. The dragon agreed and took her to same well they met. All was good but during the years she had spent with the dragon Ruzha had grown a dragon’s tail. She decided that she can't go to her folks looking like that and decided to first get rid of it. She turned and tried to bite it off but she couldn't, then she turned to the other side and tried to catch it again but failed again. Then she started throwing herself from side to side but to no avail. Suddenly she heard songs of some girls who were coming back from the fair. Horrified that her friends will see her this way, she tried once again but her heart did not hold out against the pressure and burst. The girls found her dead and buried her and from that day on every year they started gathering around the well and dancing horo, not in a circle but in a snake-like form in order to remember young Ruzha, the dragoness. This dance is called buenetz and the girls are called lazarki.

Lazaruvane holds an important place in the patriarchal Bulgarian system. Through it people express their desire to influence the positive outcome in their lives. Lazaruvane is a ritual practiced only by young girls who have reached sexual maturity. Their participation is imposed by the patriarchal society; in order to be allowed to marry and have family relations, the girls had to have performed this ritual. Their participation in the ritual is the highest point in their socialization. The lazarouvane is a complex medley of ritual acts, dress, songs and dances. The young girls perform an open horo dance, which is lead by the boyanitza, or kumitza (godmother). This role is given to the most prominent girl in the village, respected and loved by all. She has an important part in the ritual – while the girls are dancing and singing in the yard of a house, she goes to the hostess and puts a scarf on her right shoulder expecting presents – white eggs, cheese, flour, nuts, dried fruit and coins. The boyanitza must know the right song for every house for the songs vary widely - about the man of the house, about the woman of the house, about the children, about an unmarried man or woman, etc. All songs are in praise of love, marriage, the family and expectations for children in the future. After the lazaruvane, all girls and young men do the razkumichvane, they place their wreaths in the river and whose wreath comes first down the stream, this girl will be the first to marry this year.

All people who has nameday on this day are named after flowers and trees.

 

13 April

Holiday: Veliki ponedelnik (veh-lee-kee poh-neh-del-neek) (Good Monday)

The week before Easter starts with this holiday. The entire week is called great or passion week and is related to a number of restrictions and prohibitions. People are forbidden from singing songs (except religious), from dancing and from making music. Anyone who does not obey these rules risks a zit on the butt.

Housewives begin the Great Easter cleaning.

 

14 April

Holiday: Veliki vtornik (veh-lee-kee vtor-nick) (Holy Tuesday)

On this day young girls and brides must get silent water. This is fresh water that they have to go and get from three different sources and must not utter a word while doing so. The water is then believed to to have healing powers. People wash their heads with it for health and longevity.

 

15 April

Holiday: Velika sryada (heh-lee-kah srya-dah) (Holy Wednesday)

On this day women do not do house work – they don’t sew, spin nor weave. Children go out and pick wild geranium in preparation for coloring of the eggs on the next day.

 

16 April

Holiday: Veliki chetvartak (veh-lee-kee chet-ver-tuck) (Sweet Thursday)

The custom of coloring the eggs before Easter is very old and it is not clear how exactly it has come into being. According one belief, it has started when St. Mary of Magdalene presented herself to the Rome's emperor Tiberius and declared her faith by handing him a red egg and saying "Jesus Christ resurrected!". Another story talks about seven Jews who sat at a table after Christ's dead and had a chicken and some hardboiled eggs for lunch. While eating, one of the Jews said that he believes that Jesus will rise on the third day after his death. The host didn’t agree: "He will rise only after the chicken on this table rises and the eggs become red," said he and at that very moment the eggs changed their color and the chicken jumped up. Historically, the coloring of the eggs comes from the Slavs and begins around the second half of the 5th century. In Western Bulgaria the colored eggs are called perashki which is a derivative of the old Slavic word for ‘beat, strike, hail, thunder’ which in terms originated from still the older kver meaning ‘oak-tree’. This word is believed to have given the name to Perun – the god of thunder. Thursdays were celebrated as days of Perun - protecting against thunder and hail. The name Perundan (‘Perun’s day’) means Thursday in the language of Slavs. This explains the connection between coloring the eggs and this day.

The woman of the house starts dying the eggs as the first two are always colored red. They are believed to have healing properties. The first one is placed by an icon and must stay there all year round. The next year it is buried in the first furrow in the field. With the second egg the woman rubs the face of every child and then she hides it away. If for some reason people could not color the eggs on this day, they could also do it on Saturday before Easter but secretly so that no evil eye spoils the eggs. The most widely used dye in the past was the red one, prepared from boiled plants. In the Rhodope Mountains they also used infusion of the dried insect koshenil or leaves of marjoram. To color the eggs people used a special pen made from a small hollow tube of dry elder or cane with a nib made by a sharpened silver coin. The ornaments on the eggs included plant motifs, zoomorphic drawings of butterflies, fish, chickens, stylized forms of snakes and spiders, as well as geometrical and schematic anthropomorphic images. The greeting Christ has risen is also written out on the egg.

 

17 April

Holiday: Veliki petak (veh-lee-kee peh-tuck) (Good Friday)

People also call it “Crucified Friday”. This is a great holiday. People don’t work for they believe that if anyone breaks the taboo the fields will be destroyed by heavy hail. On this day in some regions the young girls draw with coal and pens the eggs dyed on Thursday. A legend tells that on Friday, when Christ was ascending the hill with the enormous cross on his back, he passed by a woman who was washing. He asked her for some water to moisten his dried lips. She took some of the slosh and gave it to him. He drank it but said nothing. Further on from a house in which people were baking bread they gave him a piece of hot bread. When he climbed the hill Christ said: “Let a woman who washes on this day be damned and let he who bakes bread be blessed!” That is why no one must wash on Friday and young girls and women make Easter dolls and breads. But before that they make fresh yeast, for Easter buns are made with new yeast. In the past all houses had yeast, for if someone lost the yeast the house remained bare and without fruit during the whole year. The fleshing up is done not by putting old yeast in the dough but by leaving it in a warm place to turn sour. From this yeast they make the ritual breads and keep some for the next baking of bread. Ritual Easter breads are different – round, with a hole in the middle, elliptical or in the shape of a pleat. But everywhere people put red eggs in them. These ritual breads are always made by married young, clean women and from wheat flour. The flour is sifted three times and during the souring of the dough fresh picked green leaves are put in it – nettle or wild geranium.

 

18 April

Holiday: Velika sabota (veh-lee-kah suh-bo-tah) (Holy Saturday)

The Bulgarians call it also “Odushna” or “Pogrebenna” for on this day the women usually visit the graveyards. They pour wine and smoke incense, light candles, give out dyed eggs, boiled wheat and bread for the souls of the dead relatives. In some villages on Saturday evening they take the yarn off the distaffs for more rain and fertility.

 

19 April

Nameday: Veliko, Velichka
Remind me

Veliko means velik (great), this is a protective name.

 

17-19 April

Holiday: Velikden (Easter, Passover)

“Oh, Easter – Sun, Life is a chicken – red and motley, Hatched by you!” (folk song) Easter, or also called Pasha (from Hebrew, meaning ‘passing over’), is a holiday that has its origin in antiquity. Roaming nomadic, Semitic and Thracian tribes celebrated it, rejoicing in spring, in the revival of nature and life. With the emergence of Christianity the holiday is connected with the resurrection of Jesus Christ and this is why at first the holiday of Jews and Christians coincided. But in 325, the year of the Nicean Council, a decision was taken to celebrate Easter on the first Sunday after the vernal equinox. That is why until now the holiday has no fixed date in the calendar. The three great days are celebrated during the time between April 4 and May 8. An ancient legend tells that many years ago, when God walked on earth among the people and healed them, there was a kingdom in which there lived an evil sorcerer. He locked the water and the sun in a deep cave with nine padlocks. Many years passed. People worked from morning till night but earth bore no fruit without water and light. The grass dried, animals died, birds disappeared. People lived in small dark houses overgrown with weeds, which they used for food… They forgot their traditions and became so malicious that they incessantly fought among themselves. In a little hut, tucked away in the mountain, there lived a young man with two children – a girl and a boy. The evil sorcerer had taken away the mother by force to his palace to serve him. The winter was hard, frost and cold bound the earth. Spring came and one day the father went to the forest for fresh On the very moment the whole Earth shone bright. From that light the sorcerer got blind. He lost his power and was turned into a small black beetle. The people broke the padlocks and freed the water and the sun. The celestial body rose high and shone over the entire Earth. The water ran down the mountain, babbled merrily and flooded the forest, the fields and the plains. The trees covered with green leaves, the birds and the animals came back to where they lived and the earth came to life again.” From that time on people dedicated this day to Grandfather Easter. They dye red eggs and celebrate the new-born nature. “Easter is not Easter without a red egg!” people say. The practice of dying eggs for Easter is as old as the holiday itself. In folk legends the egg is seen as a symbol of life, of renovation, of resurrection for new life. That is why all ancient mythologies have the belief that “the whole world” was born from an egg. One of the first mentions of the world egg can be found in the ancient Egyptian manuscripts from the period of the New Kingdom (14–11 c. BC). According to it, God Tot was born out of an egg in the town of Hermopolis (near Cairo). In the “Book of the Dead”, chapter 85 relates how eight gods from Hermopolis originated from the world ocean Nune and created the primeval egg from which, in the form of a bird, the Sun appeared. And in the “Texts of the Sarcophagi” we find the story of the egg of Osiris. In it were Osiris and Set, who were brothers, but the one was an incarnation of good and the other – an incarnation of evil. The myth indicates that the origin of good roots. There he cut a wooden egg, dyed it with red soil and decided to take it to his children to play with it. When he returned home the children were asleep and he put the red egg next to their heads so they would see it when they wake up in the morning. He also went to sleep. During the night an old man with a white beard came to him and warned him that on the next day his house will be visited by the evil sorcerer to take away his two children. “But don’t you worry,” the old man said, “hold the red egg in your hand!” He said that and disappeared. This old man was Grandfather Easter. On the next day, in a carriage drawn by a three-headed dragon, the sorcerer arrived with fire and thunder and stopped in front of his house. The father was horrified and hugged his children tightly in this arms. The red egg rolled by the heads of the children and shone like a small sun. The father remembered the advice of the good old Easter. He grabbed the egg in his hand and held it high above his head and evil is one and the same. During the Middle Ages the egg symbolized the four elements of the universe: the shell symbolized the Earth, the membrane – the air, the white symbolized the water, and the yolk – the fire. In mythology and in everyday practice life and death are always interrelated. That is why the egg has become the symbol of both life and death. In the museum of folk tradition in Basel (Switzerland) they keep the costume of Death, decorated with garlands of eggshells. And in one of the museums in Milan there is a painting by Piero Franchesca from 1472 of Virgin Mary with the infant above whom is an egg – the symbol of death and eternal life and of hope. May be this is the reason why in some regions of Bulgaria the mummers are lead by an old man carrying an egg. For the mummers “die” to come to life again with nature, with the hope for tomorrow’s prosperity. The Easter bread is the second basic symbol of this day. It is never cut but broken by the oldest person in the house into as many pieces as there are members of the family and one piece is left for God as well. After the traditional meal comes the time for songs, the ring horo dances and the “swinging”. Every young girl must “swing” not to be loved by the dragon, to be healthy and be loved by the young men.

 

24 April

Holiday: Svetli Petak - Zhivopriemni iztochnik
Nameday: Zhivko, Zhivka
Remind me

Zhivko means ‘live’, apothropic name.

 

26 April

Holiday: Tomina nedelya (To-mee-nah ney-de-lya) (St. Thomas week)

The week after Easter is called St. Thomas’ Week, after the name of one of the twelve apostles of Jesus. The legend tells that Thomas didn’t believe in Christ’s resurrection and for that reason the Savior appeared before him after a few days and allowed Thomas to put his finger in his wounds. That is why the apostle is called Doubting Thomas. This week is full of young girls’ holidays, most important among which is the celebration of the Holy or Empty Wednesday. In many villages on this day maidens play the “Mara-Lishanka”. They make a bride-doll out of the slippers of a young bride who was married during the winter (one is yellow and one is red). They dress the doll in a man’s shirt and this shirt is the sign suggesting that this is the proto-image of the great bisexual (androgynous) divinity from whom man originated, according to Bulgarian folk mythology.