Google Doodle, today on March the first, 2011, celebrates the Romanian tradition, which at its turn, celebrates the arrival of the spring. This is a holiday in Romania, Moldova and Bulgaria, even though there are some persons, which are not Romanians, by the way, who celebrate this holiday in Albania and Italy. This tradition refers to the fact that all women or ladies will receive from their men or from brothers, fathers or other persons in their family, small trinkets or amulets or talismans, who must have a braid made of red and white, symbolizing the coming of spring. The white means the snow which is slowly, slowly going away and the red means that the summer is on its way. The red color has other meanings as well.
The tradition is named “Martisor” and in all the locations where Romanians inhabit, this is a tradition. The women will get in this day flowers, not only those small little amulets which must be worn by them from the first of March until March 9, 2011. You can take the amulet off, when you are taking a shower, this is obvious. I say this because I know that are other traditions in this world, which are much more drastic than this one.
The name “Martisor” is in fact a diminutive of the March, which in Romanian it is spelled “Martie”. The gifts that the women receive must be all of them worn by that woman in different days, so that not a single “martisor” will remain unworn. This does not mean that a woman is supposed to hang all the amulets on het blouse just to show the world that she received many amulets, but a girl or a young lady can wear more than 2 of those, if they are little and also they can wrap the braid they receive along with the object on their hand to avoid in this way all the bad things that can happen to her in the year that is coming.
It is a pagan tradition, but still very popular in Romania. I don’t know the exact opinion of the church related to this matter, but all I know is that the priests also offer this kind of presents to their ladies, because the orthodox religion allows to priests to get married. The persons who wear the talisman will be powerful for the year to come and this is in fact true. If you don’t live in Romania, but you like the tradition, you can search for more on the Internet, by writing the word “martisor”. I can’t find a similar translation for this word. In English, we say “amulet”, mostly for expressing the paranormal connotations that this word have.
In some regions, the braid is not only worn on the hand, but around the neck and those persons who wear it this way, usually hang a gold coin or a silver coin to have more money in the year to come. If you know other believes about this tradition or you have Romanians in your community, you are invited to tell us what do you think of this holiday.
