Lazarov Day or Lazarov Saturday is always celebrated on the Saturday before Palm Sunday, on the eighth day before Easter. The holiday is celebrated in honor of Saint Lazarus, the defender of Christianity. The holiday brings a spring mood and is eagerly awaited.
In the Bulgarian tradition, “Lazarovden” (Lazarov Day) is a celebration of the fields, pastures and forests, but also a celebration of the girls who celebrate, behave in such a way that the bachelors like them, have a lover, and get married.
In folk tradition, this custom is the symbolic death and rebirth of the child into a woman. The girl now has a new social status – she can choose her fiance and be asked as a bride.
Some rites are associated with Lazarovden. All of them are connected with the transition to virginity, with love and domestication.
According to the custom of lazaruvane, unmarried girls up to the age of 16 become “lazarki” (the girls attending at the fest). They are collected in groups. Four of them are singers, two are “walkers” (dancers) and one is a “maid”. She leads the group and collects the presents. It is accepted that a girl goes to fest only once. The future “lazarki” gather earlier, even before the fasts, and start preparing for the lazaruvane, i.e. learn the songs they have to sing. These songs are taught to them by the elders, either girls or already brides.
The number of lazarki is not limited, but if there are a large number of them in the village, they are divided into neighborhoods. Each group goes to a certain neighborhood, because one house should not be visited twice. Dressed in folk costumes and with flower garlands on their heads, the girls go round the houses of the village. They sing ritual Lazar songs and songs about love, wish for health, fertility, happiness, prosperity and fulfillment of the most cherished hopes for everyone in the family, and in turn the owners give them walnuts, eggs, money, fruits and small gifts.
On Lazarov Day, the boys from the village ask for the hand of their chosen one. It was believed that a girl who was not lazarized could not marry. That is why it was mandatory for every girl from the village to join the ritual.
Lazar girls also perform a special, ritual dance – buenek. The chorus plays while the “lazarki” sing and go around the village. They jump high for the crops to grow and the year to be fruitful, and they stamp their feet loudly for the year to be good for the breeders and the livestock to multiply. The custom ends the next morning with the ritual “kumichene”, in which the girls drop their wreaths on the river. The one whose wrist arrives first is declared the Kumitza and the others pay their respects to her throughout the year.
Traditionally, green willow branches are plucked on Lazarov Day, which will decorate the doors the next day – on Palm Sunday.
