From "Once upon a time - manners and worldview of the Bulgarians"
According to Christian tradition, on this day Jesus Christ solemnly enters Jerusalem, before the Jewish Passover. According to the gospels, Christ and his disciple John enter the city on a donkey. Believers welcome him as the Messiah, spread olive branches in front of his clothes. Today, priests celebrate Mass and bless willow branches. Whoever takes a willow branch blessed in the church into their home, makes a wreath from it and hangs it on the door. For health, because the willow is strong and tough.
In the folk belief, Palm Sunday, Palm Sunday, and Palm Sunday – the Sunday before Easter is a celebration of flowers and the cycle of maiden spring games ends on this day. In the evening, maidens and bachelors gather in the square and for the last time play the Lazarus dance, which is the first closed dance allowed to be played after the start of the Easter Lent.
Folklore collection "Once upon a time - manners and worldview of the Bulgarians"
On Vrabnitsa, the maidens who have been lazared choose a kumitsa. They go to the river, the fountain or to the well and drop the wreaths of flowers they have woven into the water. In Thrace and Northwestern Bulgaria, instead of a wreath, the maidens knead a special bread – a doll and drop a morsel. In Karnobatsko, they perform the kumitsa with a boat made of corn leaves. The maiden whose wreath, boat or morsel comes out of the stream first is the kumitsa, the godmother, who leads the maiden dance to her home and everyone feasts at the common table. Until Easter, the remaining maidens fast (they remain ritually silent as a sign of respect) to the kumitsa. On Easter, each lazared girl goes to the kumitsa and brings painted eggs and kozunak, and the kumitsa releases her from the fast. Here, too, ritual songs are invariably present. They are dominated by prayers about what kind of girls and bachelors they should be - beautiful, hardworking, honest, strong, they sing about the love of young people and are called upcoming marriages.
© 2023 Iliana Dechkova