Magda suitably festooned to meet local requirements
It is the custom here as March makes its lion-like entrance to exchange small trinkets of red-and-white thread with friends and loved ones. The little bracelet, pin, zipper-pull, etc, known as the Мартеница (Martenitsa), symbolizes health and happiness for the coming year, and as the first of March progresses your collection of them mounts around the wrist both in number and ornateness of the individual bauble. It is not unusual by the end of the day to have an enormous and unruly wreath of the things built up upon your extremities. This serves the secondary function of making everyone a little more impatient for the arrival of spring, as there are certain rules about under what circumstances they may be finally jettisoned.
Season's first cast-offs poach on a lilac bush
It is said that you must wear each Martenitsa non-stop once your friend appends it to you. Failure to observe this stricture can result in dirty looks, hurt feelings, truncated friendships, and charges of your own personal responsibility for the delay of spring. Once you’re banded, you must keep wearing those Martenitsi until you see your first stork OR budding tree of spring. Once the target is acquired, you are then required to remove the Martenitsi, which by that time may have grown into your skin and which may or may not still be recognizably red and white, and tie them to a budding branch, preferably of a fruit tree. This last bit presents no difficulty at all as in this part of Sofia, at least, you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting multiple plum trees, whose shocks of white blossoms are the first real harbinger of spring right around the end of March, which, with any luck at all, has become slightly more lamb-like.
Plum trees make all the non-plums look like slobs
In addition to the ritual donning and doffing of the Martenitsi, spring around here brings with it a smorgasbord of sensory and logistical stimuli. The snows of March recede, revealing tiny, important bits of the tire chains, maybe, and shoals of thawing dog shit. In the warming, fecund soil seeds are sown, which leads to the natural cycle of PapaAreThePeasGrowingYetPapaAreThey? PapaAreThePeasGrowingYetPapaAreThey? PapaAreThey? PapaAreThey? The feral dogs which abound in the woods behind our home express their relief at having been among the happy few to survive the harsh Balkan winter by capering through the back yard clutching Jolly Rogers in their maws. Millions of insects awaken from their long winter’s slumber, stir, and emerge into the bathrooms, where they seem really quite happy no matter how much poison Magda lobs at them. It’s Ant War again!
And, of course, with April finally under way, we enter the last month in the countdown to the fast-approaching first anniversary of shit in Alek’s pants.
Lonely plum tree Мартеница
What an interesting tradition. Thanks for sharing.
They’re biodegradable, I hope. Or do some trees still have their paraphernalia from Martenitsi 1975?
It is a really interesting and charming tradition, and I am nowhere near as cynical about it as this post may have come across, as far as you know. However, to answer your question, no, biodegradability seems to be low on the list of Martenitsa requirements, so it is not unusual to come across specimens from Marches past, typically looking a little the worse for having spent some unknown number of seasons lashed to a cherry tree in all weather.
Fascinating. I saw these pictures pop up and wondered what bizarre hazing ritual you were being subjected to by your community.
hey! i saw one of these hanging off a tree down the block the other day. i kind of love this tradition.