SRING CUSTOMS AND
TRADITIONS IN ROMANIA
Over the centuries, the Romanian
culture has developed and many
ancient beliefs took the shape of some
traditions which are still kept
nowadays.
In early March, Romania celebrates
spring in a unique way.
MARTISORUL- THE 1ST OF MARCH
Celebrated on 1 March, when the entire
world rejoices the beginning of
spring, “Martisor” is a beautiful
Romanian custom consisting in a
little gift called “martisor” offered by
any man to all the women in his life.
The approximate English translation for
Martisor could be trinket but in the
Romanian language it’s actually a
diminutive of Martie- a little March.
The word “martisor” has latin roots and
is the old name of March.
Nowadays, it is a symbol of spring, and
the item itself has become a
true work of art. Its lace, made of
two twisted threads of wool, colored
in red and white, represents the unity
of opposites: summer-winter, heatcold, light-dark. It is worn by children
and women in order to be protected,
healthy and strong for the year to
come.
The “Martisor”
On 1st March Romania is a truly
spectacle, the scene of thousands
little stalls with twisted red-white
strings and original trinkets. From
beautiful handmade pieces to
silver charms, ingenious figurines,
ecological amulets, elegant
brooches, vintage or fashionable
jewels, the vendors exhibit their
merchandise offering men a great
range of gifts to choose from.
 It is usually worn by every
Romanian woman for 9 to 12
days and then, its red-white
strings are tied in the
branches of a tree.The
legend says that if the tree
blossoms, the person who
has knotted it there will have
a wonderful year.

Babele - The Old Ladies

The first 9 days of spring are called
“Babe” and they are very important
for Romanians. There is a tradition in
our country, besides many others,
which persuades every single person
to pick a day and if that day will be
beautiful and sunny and so will be the
entire year for the person who chose
it.

“Babe” or the articulated noun
“Babele” means “old ladies” in
Romanian and it has derived from
an agricultural tradition used by
people to predict how the year is
going to turn out. In the rural sides
of the country “Babele” has the
same meaning today as it had
once, still being an essential part
in peasants’ life.
The legend has it that the first day of
March is the day of the old lady Dochia,
an ancient agrarian divinity who climbed
the mountains with her son (Dragobete)
wearing 9 coats. In the first day, it
started to rain and she took off one
coat, the second day she did the same
thing as the rain didn’t stop and so she
continued by taking off all of her coats
and ending tragically- freezing in the top
of the mountain.
40 Mucenici

9 March represents the day of the 40 saints
called “Mucenici” (martyrs) or “mosi”- old
men. The “40 Mucenici” or “44 Mucenici”in some areas of the country, is celebrated
by almost all Romanians.

Women are baking human shape cakes for the
entire family while a few are taking to the
church and given to the poor.
In Mehedinti and Gorj districts, they make a
cake by wheat meal and they put a golden coin
in it. The cake is then cut in equal slices, one
for each member of the family. The one who
finds the coin will be the luckiest one.
On 9 March people, especially men, should
drink 40 (44) glasses of wine and during the
year, the wine will turn into blood and power.
“Mucenici” is a traditional holiday with
religious connotations, representing, in the
Orthodox calendar, the 40 saints from Sevastia
city who have been burned alive.
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There are also various legends behind this
holiday, each of them representing different
areas of the country but, in the end Romanians
like to celebrate and, considering the high
number of full glasses involved and the fact that
men also consider 9 March as being Men’s Day,
you can easily realize that “Mucenicii” will
mean partying until midnight.
EASTER
Resurrection of Christ, is one of the most celebrated Christian holidays in theworld. Each
country has its own way of celebrating Easter, through different customs and Romania
too has its own wealth of traditions waiting to be discovered.

Easter in Romania is celebrated
according to the rituals of the
Eastern Orthodox Church. The
Easter entire season consists of
Flowers Saturday (Lazarus’
Saturday), Palm Day (Flowers
Day), Great Thursday, Great
Friday, Easter, The Small
Fountain and Good People’s
Easter.

Each of these has small
interesting rituals. The Easter
celebration goes on for a long
week and finally wraps with
Good People’s Easter
celebrated in honor of the
ancient spirits.
Flowers Saturday
(Lazarus’ Saturday)

Lazarus, the character whose name
was given to this day can have various
meanings. He is thought to be either the
brother of Martha and Mary, who was
resurrected by Jesus, prior to His entrance in
Jerusalem, either Lazarus the poor, either
„Lazarica” (a Romanian diminutive of Lazarus),
who died craving for pies.
On this day the dead are waiting at the gates
of Heaven to be remembered and celebrated,
with traditional drinks and dishes like “coliva.”
Coliva is the food for the dead and it’s
prepared traditionally by widows or close
family members of the deceased. The dish is
used in various death related occasions, to
celebrate and honor the dead. The coliva is
usually decorated with a cross motif, made of
cocoa or nuts and sugar. The coliva is always
blessed in the church by a priest before being
consumed. The ceremony is long, but beautiful
– the participants join their hands in a ritual
“hora.”
Palm Sunday- Floriile
Palm Sunday is a Christian moveable feast which always falls on the Sunday before Easter Sunday. The feast
commemorates the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem in the days before his Passion.
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Evoking the entering of Jesus into Jerusalem
riding on a donkey, welcomed with a lot of
flowers and cheers, Palm Sunday is both a
celebration in which the pre-Christian and
Christian elements combine happily, resulting
in extremely beautiful customs and traditions.
The name of the feast in Romanian (Florii)
comes from the Roman goddess Flora. The
green branches used this day, employed both
in domestic and church rituals, embodies the
symbol of chastity and the annual rebirth of
vegetation.
The day before people gather willow
branches, tie them in bundles and go to
church to be sanctified by a priest. After
sanctification, the branches called 'mâţişori'
(approx. 'kitties') are taken home by the
faithful to adorn with the icons, windows,
doors, entrances.
Another belief said that how weather is like
on Palm Sunday, so will be on Easter Day. On
this day celebrate the name-day those who
bear a flower name (around 1.5 million
Romanians).
THE BLACK THURSDAY
It’s the Thursday before Easter, also known as the Great Thursday or the
Thursday of Sufferings

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It’s the day when all graves and the doors of
Heaven open and let the dead return home,
to spend Easter with their families. Don’t
imagine a Halloween-type of celebration,
there’s nothing scary about this belief. The
return of the dead doesn’t bring evil, the
spirits are driven by love of Christ and family
rather than by a black desire of haunting the
living. It’s believed that they don’t stay indoors,
but on the roofs or in the yards so in many
regions in Romania people light fires to give
them light and to keep them warm.
In the south of Romania, people don’t light
fires, but they light candles and prepare drinks
and food for the dead. The food is mostly
coliva and colaci. Coliva is a type of cake made
of boiled wheat, sweetened with sugar and
decorated with nuts and sometimes bonbons.
It represents the body of the dead that has to
be buried first to come back to life, pretty
much as the grain is buried into the ground to
grow into a new plant.
Aside the somehow macabre superstition about the
return of the dead, the Great Thursday is a time of
intense preparations for the Easter feast. It’s believed
that those who sleep on the Great Thursday will be
lazy the whole year. Women and girls particularly
should not sleep, for if they do Joimarita will come to
put a spell on their hands, a spell that will make the
women unable of working the whole year. So to keep
“awake” people work this Thursday, preparing all they
need for Easter: cleaning the house, preparing the
traditional “Cozonaci,” dyeing eggs. All is allowed,
except doing laundry, because Romanians believe that
the dirty water will go to the dead.
The Great Friday- Vinerea Mare
The Friday before the Easter is called the Great Friday. Also named the Friday of
sufferings, it is the day when Jesus was crucified.

People don’t eat on this day, as it is
believed that by doing that they will be
healthy and they will know they’ll dye
three days before.
The tradition recommends that you step
on a piece of iron when you wake up, in
order to be protected from bruises. If you
bathe in the river before the sun rises, you
won’t suffer from bone illness. In Bucovina
it is said that who bathes three times in a
cold river will be healthy all year long.
People go to church to confess.

Bread may not be baked, the earth may not
be ploughed and trees may not be planted,
as they won’t fruit.
The Easter
The Easter is the most important celebration of the Romanian people and it is preceded by
numerous preparations and rituals.

The Easter
It’s a must for the people to have a clean
house and have all the ritual foods ready.
Because it’s a good thing to have a new piece
of clothing on the Easter, girls and young
wives start to sew shirts for them and also for
their parents, brothers, husbands or children,
with about two weeks in advance.
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On the night between Holy Saturday to
Easter Sunday, people go to church to
celebrate the Resurrection of Christ by
attending the midnight mass, where they light
candles. After that, they take the lighted
candles home, to have the holly light in their
homes, souls and lives.
On the Easter Sunday morning, people usually
go to church for the Easter morning
mass. This mass is however not as much
attended as the midnight one. After that, they
go back home and eat the blessed food which
they took with them to the church.
The Good People’s Easter(Dead
People’s Easter)

The Good People’s Easter is celebrated
a week after the Easter, on Monday. In
the Romanian tradition, the Good
People are the ancient’s spirits, which
live between the two worlds, where
Saturday’s water spills into the Earth.
The Good People are religious people
and fast each time they should,
according to the traditions. However
they are not aware of the day when
Easter is celebrated until they see
remains of the painted eggs on the
water, about eight days later.
In gratitude for the dead, packages
containing red painted eggs and
pies are placed on the graves and
candles are lit.
Easter food

Dyed eggs are traditional food at Easter, but of
course in this category we cannot include the
beautiful hand painted eggs, which are emptied
of their contents. Such eggs are purely
decorative. Everywhere in Romania, in the
Great Thursday, eggs are dyed in red, yellow,
green, blue or black, each of these colors
having its special meaning, for example red
stands obviously for the blood of Christ,
green is a symbol of passing from Winter to
Spring and black stands for Jesus suffering on
the cross.

Related to eggs we should not forget
the traditional custom of knocking the
eggs. This starts the first day of Easter and it
continues till the Great Sunday. When cracking
eggs the two parts involved should say
“Christ is risen!”, and the answer to this
is “He is truly risen!” – this is also the
greeting that replaces the common “hello” till
the Great Sunday. There are many
superstitions related to this custom, one
saying that the one whose egg cracks first will
die younger than his oponent.
Easter food

The traditional main
dishes at Easter in
Romanian are
prepared from fresh
lamb: lamb roast and
drob (lamb haggis –
spiced minced lamb
organs with green
onion, green garlic
and eggs in lamb
stomach).
Easter Food

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The special Easter cake,
known as Pasca, is baked on
Great Thursday. The Pasca can
have a round shape or a
rectangular one- named
cozonac- the Romanian
panettone- (symbolizing the
shape of Jesus’ grave).
The shells of the eggs used
for the Pasca are thrown in a
river. This action stems from
the ancient belief that the
shells are taken by the river
to the country of the Good
People, announcing them the
Easter has came.
Other Spring customs
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The Paparuda "Rain Caller" is
the ritual celebrated in Spring
on a date that varies from
place to place.
It is an old magical dance
invoking rain, this customs
survived to the present day in
many villages of Romania. The
children knit coronets,
adorning them with ribbons.
Then they dance, going from
house to house. The hostess
throws water and milk after
them. The children and the
young people have to receive
a coin or wheat, corn, flour or
bean.
Presentation made within the
multilateral Comenius project
“Art and Science- The Best
Ambassadors of the National
Values within Europe”