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If on 1 March you decide to walk along the streets in Bulgaria you will meet numerous smiling people. But the martenitsi are the first to catch one's glimpse. Everybody has been decorated with them. You can even see dogs and cats with martenitsi. In the small mountainous villages people decorate with them even the cattle : horses, lambs, goats.
Maybe you are now wondering what exactly this martenitsa is. The classical martenitsa is made by twisted together white and red threads. Sometimes there could be tassels from the same threads at the end. Usually the tassels are decorated with blue beads, coins or threads in other colours.
In the old times the martenitsa had been acknowledged as a ritual sign - as an amulet keeping the evil away. Today almost all these "functions" have been forgotten and the custom symbolizes only the arrival of spring. Bot even now the Bulgarians still believe that if they have martenitsi in March they would be healthy throughout the year.
The mythical Granny Marta represents the spring, the sun which could easily burn the faces of the people. According to the old beliefs Granny Marta is an old and limping woman. That is why she carries an iron cane to lean on. Folklore beliefs describe her character as extremely unstable. When she is smiling, the sun is shining; when she gets angry, the earth is freezing hard. Most of the rituals aim at propitiating her.
There are special places where martenitsi are put - on the wrists, on the neck as necklaces or on the clothes on the left side. In some Bulgarian regions the place decorated with martenitsa represents the social status of the person. The young unmarried girls put martenitsi on the left side of their clothes, the young bachelors put them on the little finger of their left hands and the married men put martenitsi in their right sock.
People decorate themselves with martenitsi for a certain period of time. Usually the period is connected with the signs marking the approaching of spring - flowering trees, meeting of the first coming migratory birds - storks, swallows and cranes. Then people take off their martenitsi and hang them on flowering trees.
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