Grandma Marta – 1st Mar
March 1st, 2008
Baba (Grandma) Marta is one of the most observed traditions, and marks the end of winter & the beginning of spring. In the North, the winter seasons are personalised as a family of two brothers Golyam Sechko (Big Axe — January) and Malak Sechko (Small Axe — February) who wreak havoc in people’s lives by stopping all normal activities. Their grandma Marta is known to have a rather volatile temper — laughing one day (and then it’s sunny & warm) and fuming & angry the next (cloudy & cold). On 1 March everyone wears a ‘martenica’. The traditional martenica is a bracelet made of interlaced red and white cotton/wool strands. “Red & white” is the traditional desciption of a healthy person, red is for rosy cheeks, white is for unblemished skin. So by giving you a martenica, people wish you health and prosperity. An interesting note is that in BG psyche health & prosperity are the two sides of the same thing; you can’t have prosperity without health. There are many popular shapes of martenici as two cherries or a man and a woman (called Pizho and Penda respectively), while kids wear plastic figurines that have red and white strands. You do not buy yourself one, you receive from & give to other people (family, friends, colleagues and neighbours), and end up with a lot of bracelets & lapel buttons. The tradition says we should wear them until we see a stork (as a migrating bird, this is the true sign the weather has turned). Undoubtedly, the child delivering fame of the stork plays a role in its selection (the allusion of children as the new spring in the life cycle). Once you see a stork, you tie your martenica to a fruit tree (again, the perpetuation of the idea of harvest & riches). More practically, we wear martenici until about 1 April. This is a unique custom. If you see a person with martenica, he/she is either Bulgarian or received it from a Bulgarian. Ask them! 
