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Baba MartaBaba Marta
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Also known as Grandma Marta, Baba Marta is a season before the beginning of March each year when Bulgarians present to relatives and friends martenitsa (also known in some Bulgarian regions as martenka) - a double red and white tassel made of wool- to bring health and happiness.
The red colour, as people say, is to protect from disease and the white colour makes you live longer. As her name comes from the month that she comes in, Baba Marta is believed to be either severe and cruel, making the whole country white with snow, or mild and kind giving health and strenth through her martenitsas.
On the first day of March, the Bulgaria people and their friends put the martenitsas on their clothes, or wrists, and even on their animals, and wish each other health and happiness with "Chestita baba Marta" - (in English, "Happy Grandma Marta"). "Marta" comes from the word for March (Mart) in Bulgarian.
This is an ancient Bulgarian (pagan) tradition (well - nobody knows how old but most probably it's more than one thousand years old) and symbolizes the end of the cold winter and the coming of the spring.
Martenitsas should be worn until the person sees the first stork (supposedly returning from the South and not the one in the Zoo). Then martenitsas are thrown onto a tree. The red and white colours symbolize the snow and the blood from an old story where, a stork brings the blessing for health to a small child from its parents, who are far away. The giving of the martenitsa helps you feel like Spring is near. The "arrival" of the stork indicates that this has happened.
The lack of "real" winter and and a shortage of storks raises some difficulties in implementing this tradition nowadays but Bulgarians are still celebrating and very fond of the 1st of March (in a traditional and "modern" way at the same time).
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