Easter, the most important time of the year for Orthodox Christians, has been connected with numerous rites and rituals for centuries. Many of the popular traditions accompanying this holiday season bear the mark of Christianity. But scholars have studied and described a host of practices that are distinctly pagan in origin and mythological in character.

The rites and rituals during Lent - the period preceding Easter - revolve around the transition from winter to spring. This is a time when people would turn to the visible and the invisible forces of nature, benevolent but also sinister mythical beings. A time devoted to rituals supplicating for protection by the powers of good so the forces of darkness would not interfere in the lives of humans. This belief is reflected in the prohibitions throughout Lent - prohibitions on dancing closed horo (ring) dances, or listening to music performed on any instrument. There are many songs and legends devoted to kaval players, young men who would wake wood nymphs up with their music for which they would duly be punished. According to popular belief these mythical maidens honour Christian feast days – especially Easter - and anyone who does not shall not escape their ill-doings.

But the greatest number of beliefs at Easter time are connected with red eggs. Eggs, painted red were thought to possess magical powers, especially the first eggs dyed before dawn on Maundy Thursday. In popular belief Thursday was a day when reaching into hens’ nests to look for eggs was prohibited, but Maundy Thursday was the exception. As prominent Bulgarian ethnographer Dimitar Marinov writes: “The eggs collected on Maundy Thursday are set aside. They are the first to be counted, washed, cleaned with alum and dyed. The other eggs come second.” The egg that was laid first was thought to be the most powerful. The water used to dissolve the dye in was said to be “silent” water (brought to the house in absolute silence before sunup from three different wells by “pure” lasses). This water was used to refresh the leaven once a year – on Maundy Thursday. The first red eggs would be arranged on a new napkin inside a sieve – so the sun would see them and smile. These eggs are thought to be particularly potent, they have the power to protect, cure etc., that is why they are used in a great many rituals, some universal and performed in all parts of the country, others typical of a given region. The songs the women and girls would sing while they were colouring the eggs were usually about their beloved, it was for them these small tokens of love were intended. The girls would sing of their sweethearts and dream suitors, the married women – of their husbands describing them as “daredevils, heroes and warriors”.

There is ample proof that Christian Orthodox Easter came to replace a much older pagan tradition that has left its mark on all of the rituals involved. In his book “Holidays of the Bulgarians in myths and legends” ethnologist Nikolay Nikov quotes an ancient legend of how the holiday came about. The legend takes us back to the time long ago when God walked among men, helped and healed them. There was a kingdom then ruled by an evil wizard who kept the water and the sun locked up in a deep cave behind nine padlocks. People worked from morning till night but nothing would grow. The grass wilted, the animals and the birds vanished. Somewhere up in the mountain there lived a young man with his two children – a boy and a girl. One day he went to the forest to grub for roots for food. There he whittled an egg out of wood, painted it red and took it home for his children to play with. When he got home he placed the egg next to the children’s heads as they slept, so they would see it as they woke up. During the night an old man with a long white beard appeared in his dreams to warn him that the evil wizard would come to his house and snatch the children. He told him not to be afraid but to take the red egg in his hand; then he vanished. This old man was Father Easter. The next day, a dragon-drawn carriage came with the wizard inside. He rushed into the house, but the father did as he had been told – he took the egg in his hand and raised it high above his head. That very moment a flash of light illuminated the Earth and the wizard lost his eyesight and his power. The people broke the padlocks and freed and sun and the water. The trees came into leaf, the birds and the animals returned, everything sprang back to life. Since then people have been celebrating the day of Father Easter and have painted eggs red.

Easter day marks the end of most prohibitions. The rituals performed on this day include swings and horo dancing which were magical and very potent in warding off evil. The songs sung while swinging and dancing were all about dragons, wood nymphs, unlocking the water, about fertility and future weddings. On this day the lasses who took part in a ritual called kumichene put on the attire of a maiden for the first time – a shirt, new clothes, a wreathe, a necklace, a nosegay. The horo danced on Easter day was now closed. The world faced a new beginning, the round shape of the horo symbolized the round sun – a universal cult that has come down to us from the mists of time.

English version: Milena Daynova