If you’re a member of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, you turn out every January 6 for St. Jordan’s Day—no matter how cold it is. You may be shivering in your thermal underwear, but hey, it’s a holiday that celebrates Epiphany and the baptism of Jesus. You don’t want to miss that! Now, if you’ve ever been to southeast Europe in winter, you’ll know that January 6 is a time of year that’s generally far too cold to do much else other than sit inside and complain. For most people, that is. For Bulgarian men who want to increase their chances at a year filled with health and happiness (and prove their manliness), it’s a chance to take part in a custom that’s probably going to stop their hearts (or perhaps induce fatal shrinkage): chasing a cross thrown by a priest into the frigid water, then fighting to get it on land.
The first man to reach the holy cross and bring it to shore gets a special blessing, along with loss of all feeling in his body. That’s because the dip in the water (again, we can’t emphasize how cold it is) symbolizes Christ’s baptism by John the Baptist in the River of Jordan. What everybody overlooks is that the river’s outlet was the Sea of Galilee, which was surrounded by a desert! It never produced the kinds of frigid temperatures typical of a Bulgarian winter. And for those who haven’t yet lost consciousness from hypothermia trying to rid their house of evil spirits, there’s the “icy round dance.” Because that’s just what you want to do after you’ve been thrashing around in freezing water. There’s no blessed cross with this event, just a lot of men dancing around in the water to the accompaniment of peppy traditional tunes. The women apparently have no involvement in these kinds of activities, which says a lot about the native intelligence of Bulgarian females.
On the opposite end of the Slavic spectrum, the Bulgarian tradition called nestinari is all about heat. On the feet. A practice similar to the Indian custom of firewalking, this version takes place in remote areas in the Strandzha Mountains, near Turkey. Its roots are pre-Christian, although it’s now combined with the Eastern Orthodox celebration of Saint Constantine and Helen’s Day. The brave participants enter a trance, brought about by the rhythmic beating of a sacred drum, then dance barefoot on hot embers seemingly without experiencing any pain (although this may have something to do with the lingering frostbite from chasing crosses into frozen rivers).
The Kukeri, Festival of Monsters
Another custom that aims to provide the participants with health and happiness is the folk festival called the Kukeri. It also has religious origins, but nothing even close to Christianity; the rituals trace back to an ancient cult. It also takes place during winter, but the truly chilling aspect has to do with the costumes worn by the performers. They put on creepy masks and animal pelts, dancing crazily in the streets. Then they visit people’s homes at night before congregating in the village square to frolic and entertain young and old alike. Which all sounds like the first act of a horror movie, if we ever heard one.
New Year’s Eve is another occasion when chasing away evil spirits is a priority (apparently evil spirits just never take a break). Children prepare their survachkas (a tree branch decorated with colorful threads and other adornments). The kids then beat their relatives with their fancy sticks while reciting religious verse, with the goal of chasing away dark forces and clearing the way for good fortune in the coming year. It must feel great for the kids to get a little of their own back and whale on their parents. In return the relatives inexplicably reward them with candy. A win-win situation all around for the children, one would have to say. And by the way, should you be a guest in Bulgaria and find yourself getting smacked with sticks, coerced into frozen water dancing, and walking on smoldering embers no matter how much you protest, it’s possible you didn’t realize something important: Over there, nodding your head means no, while shaking it from side to side means “Yes, I would very much like to be subjected to something highly unpleasant.”
Good Luck and Don’t Slip
When it comes to health and prosperity, Bulgarians have a lot of ways of seeking them. Like whenever someone needs to leave the house for an important event, say, for the first day of school, an important test, and so on. Before they go, a copper vessel of water is poured in front of the doorstep so that the challenge ahead will proceed as smoothly as the spilled water. A bride-to-be will kick over a container of water before leaving for her wedding, perhaps to represent her father’s gratefulness that her water didn’t break before the nuptials.
Be glad some customs haven’t survived to the twenty-first century, such as the way ancient Bulgarians treated their dead bodies. If you thought splashing around in icy water was cold, what about driving stakes through the hearts of those deemed to be “bad” people, to keep them from rising from the dead as a ghoulish terrors of the night? In 2014, about a hundred of these thirteenth-century “vampire graves” were discovered near the southern border along Greece. To be absolutely sure they stayed buried, sometimes a leg would also be removed just below the knee or a plowshare driven into the collarbone.
And that’s just the way the ancient Bulgarians treated the people they didn’t like. As far as their wealthy and important people, some of them got cut in half and buried from the pelvis up, as revealed from a prehistoric archaeological dig that uncovered a graveyard dated to 4700–4200 B.C.E. If you were really special and lived during the time of the Roman Empire, you could apparently (as discovered by researchers in 2008) be treated to an interment inside your very own chariot, complete with horses and your favorite dog buried standing upright by your side. So hey, if you should wind up having a stroke from splashing around in the wintry waters on your trip to one of the most eastern countries in Eastern Europe, maybe your family could request a similar send-off from the people in charge. But the chances are probably better that they’ll just be stared at for a while, followed by rapid and intense nodding.
