The Table On St. Todor's Day Or Horse Easter

2025 Author: Jasmine Walkman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2025-01-23 10:18

After Sirni Zagovezni, the Bulgarian church celebrates the church holiday Todorovden. The day is dedicated to St. Theodore Tyrone and is celebrated on the first Saturday after Zagovezni. This holiday is also called Horse Easter!

The tradition of St. Todor's Day ordered horse races, also known as (kushii), which are still noisy and merry in many parts of Bulgaria. Bulgarians believe that on this day St. Todor puts on nine cloaks, rides a white horse and goes to God to pray for summer to come.

The holiday unites the hope for health, happiness, good future of the young.

According to popular belief, on this day St. Todor walks around the field with his horse to check how the crops grow. As soon as he arrived in the Kingdom of the Lord, Saint Todor drove a spear into the ground and tied his horse to it. When steam rose from the ground, only then did his wish come true.

The people associate the holiday with the hope of fertility and Todorovden is revered by young and old. As soon as the sun appeared, the mistress of the house kneaded ritual bread in the shape of a horseshoe, decorated with walnuts or boiled corn. Spread with honey and distribute to loved ones.

Before that, the mother-in-law checks if it is well baked and only then does it break. In this way the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law became close and the old ones accepted the young bride. The bread is also placed in the mangers of the horses to be healthy and to have rich offspring.

Bread is also known as hoof, horse or simple Saint Todor. On this day, the horses are combed festively, and in their manes the girls weave blue beads against lessons or tie red threads to protect them from evil eyes. The greatest attention is paid to the ponytail. First it is combed, then woven and richly decorated.

The Sunday before this holiday is called Todor's Sunday. Every day until the holiday, the girls put three cloves of garlic and three grains of corn under their pillow. In their dreams they could guess about their future - when and for whom they would marry. He washed his hair with water in which there were straws from the manger, so that they too had healthy and shiny hair, like horse manes.

Photo: Sergey Anchev

The grandmothers cut the children's hair for the first time after the winter. That is why in some places it is called shaved like a donkey in March.

The kushis were held on a wide meadow - there the whole village gathered to watch how the fastest horse won. The prize was a bag of oats and a wreath on his head. The owner made a respectable tour of the village, and then gave a hearty treat in his home.

The holiday ended with people.

The table on St. Todor's Day is compulsorily composed of Todorovden bread, lentils, potatoes, mushroom soup and boiled corn.

Congratulations to all who celebrated!