Lazarovden or Lazaritsa is a moveable feast that falls on the Saturday before Tsvetnitsa (Palm Sunday), one week before Easter. On this day the church celebrates the miracle of Lazarus rising from the dead, when Jesus said to him: “Lazarus, come forth!” This miracle is in fact a symbol of the Saviour’s own resurrection that was to come just days later.

In traditional Bulgarian folklore, the resurrection of a man dead is honoured in two different ways – by revering the dead and by celebrating the living with incantations for a happy life, health and fertility in the months to follow. Lazarovden has a natural bond with the symbols of the coming spring as the transition from winter to summer, the awakening of nature and the resurrection of life itself.

According to popular belief, Tsvetnitsa (Palm Sunday) (also known as Vrubnitsa derived from the word vurba or willow) is the day when the dead souls come out of their graves to await friends and relatives. That is the reason why the night before the fete is known as Lazarovska zadushnitsa (All Souls’ Day). The women would bake special ritual loaves and decorate them with crosses. Then they would take them to the cemetery, along with boiled wheat and wine to pour over the graves and to give out to people, saying Bog da prosti - God rest their souls. In some parts of Northeastern Bulgaria there was a custom on Tsvetnitsa to carry sanctified willow twigs taken from the church and to fix them into the ground over the graves and then to light a fire to mourn the dead. This was a way for people to reach out to their deceased relatives, who were invariably regarded as part of the family. They also sought their protection because in popular belief, the dead had the power to help the living and to ensure fertility. Paradoxical as it may seem, it was there, in the kingdom of the dead, deep in the Earth’s bowels that the roots of life lie hidden.

The other face of Lazarovden is cheerful and exuberant – a ritual called Lazaruvane, performed across Bulgaria to this day, especially in villages and in small towns. The ritual is performed by young girls who are to wed during the year. Wearing their best clothes and opulent head-dress, they would make the rounds of the town or village singing ritual songs and dancing with wishes for health, happiness, a happy marriage and many children. They received a warm welcome everywhere they went and were given ritual loaves and white eggs which they would later dye for Easter. It was thought that wherever the lazarki girls went, they brought happiness and joy to the house.

Around the middle of Lent the girls would start getting together to prepare for their lazaruvane with a woman of more experience. Their repertoire included a great many songs, sung at different times as the ritual unfolded: when the group was getting together, as they were walking along, in the field, in the maiden gardens. Each member of the family would have a song of his or her own: there was a song for the well-off farmer, for the woman in a wealthy home, for the young bride, for the pregnant wife, for children, for ploughmen, for the goldsmith, the tailor, the priest. There is even evidence that during the time of the Ottoman domination of the country, the lazarki girls sang to the Turkish dignitaries and their wives, even though they were Muslim.

But the greatest number of songs was for the lasses and young men who are yet to marry. The symbols used in these songs convey wishes for matrimonial happiness and harmony in the home. The lyrics often speak of gold and silver as symbols of affluence and happiness, of spring flowers to compare the young girls with, of the golden apple as a symbol of love. The songs sung by the lazarki girls describe the wondrous beauty of the girl and the power of the young man’s love in minute detail. Some songs tell the story of a lad who goes hunting, but instead of game, catches a girl to take home, or about a young man wooing two or even three girls at a time. There are even songs about a lass, loved by a zmey (dragon) and this is connected with the belief that by taking part in the ritual, young girls would be protected from the baleful passion of this mythical monster.

Prof. Vihra Baeva is a folklore expert at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Institute for Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum.

English version: Milena Daynova