Let’s face it – we are not one of the most religious nations.
In our everyday life, we rarely think of the Christian faith. We usually superstitiously “knock on wood” and garnish it with a “God forbid!” and “God forbid!”.
If we really want something to come true for us, we often say “God bless” without thinking.
Along with this, we necessarily repeat some small, frankly pagan ritual – tapping her with our knuckles under the table, spitting in her bosom or over her shoulder.
At the university, one of my professors gave an extremely accurate definition of us Bulgarians, calling us – both himself and all of us – “Christian plumbing”.
Photo: iStock Traditional kukers at the Surva festival
Translated – “Easter and Christmas Christians”, because we usually write Christians mostly around these dates. At the same time, we do a real exercise in hypocrisy by waving our Christianity as a talisman against things we don’t like – Halloween for example.
Like a bunch of garlic waved in front of a vampire, because as much as Halloween is not Christian, so is tapping your fingers under the table top or on the head.
What’s more, many of the customs we most cherish, respect, and brag about are just as pagan as Halloween masquerading. However, we do not give them away for nothing, but keep them as a fragile national treasure and repeat them every year with a devotion far stronger than that to our religion.
Photo: iStock
Is there a Bulgarian who did not cringe at the sight of a firecracker entering the red embers? Or who hasn’t felt a special twitch under the spoon while hearing the mighty ringing of the cookers?
Are we proud that our women walk barefoot into the fire and our men wear 50-pound cook suits? Yes of course. Are these customs Christian? Absolutely not.
But we love them, not just because they are ours, but because they bring us fun when we perform them. With the greatest pleasure, we let the children give us survak for health, we tie our own mittens, we feast on halva or a boiled egg of Sirni Zagovezni and ritually slaughter animals.
Our entire culture and holiday calendar is a complex and colorful tangle of paganism, superstition and Christianity.
We embrace this fact about 360 days a year, there is no point in pretending to be a people we are not during the remaining 5-6 days.
Indeed, no one will believe us how religious we are, while with one hand we are baptized and with the other we are divination on herbs, we ritually throw down the vines and we are survak.
And how much easier we will live if we ignore the line “This is not Christian!”.
We will breathe freely because we will accept – some have Halloween, some have Surva. And if we feel like it, we’ll note both.
We’re going to rock a Men’s Chore in January, and then we’re going to give each other a kitschy stuffed heart on Valentine’s Day. We’ll dress up on Halloween, but we’ll be just as enthusiastic to help the child set up a beautiful cheesecloth with thread, popcorn and coins at Christmas.
And so we would live much easier because of the honesty to ourselves – that we are Bulgarians and we will celebrate whatever is in our hearts, even if it is with pagan roots as thick as a vine.
Well, let them call us “Plumbing Christians”, it’s still true…
2023-10-28 05:00:00
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