Survakane
Survakane () is a Bulgarian custom used to wish a prosperous new year. Survakane is a tradition performed with a decorated stick, known as a ''survaknitsa'' () or ''survachka ()'', on New Year's Day, as a measure for health during the year. Tradition History Survakane dates back to ancient times, and has its roots in pagan rituals. This much is clear about the origins of the tradition, although exactly when, where, or by whom it was practiced first is still a matter of debate. Ritual Survakane proper is a ritual in which a member of the family, typically the youngest, lightly pats the back of others with a survaknitsa on the morning of New Year's Day (known in Bulgarian as ''Vasilovden'').''Vasilovden'' is the name day of the name Vasil, among others, and falls on January 1. While doing this, he or she recites a short verse wishing their relative well for the new year. The members of the family (usually children) who do the ritual are known as ''survakari'' or ''survakarcheta''. Af ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bulgaria
Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern portion of the Balkans directly south of the Danube river and west of the Black Sea. Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey to the south, Serbia and North Macedonia to the west, and Romania to the north. It covers a territory of and is the tenth largest within the European Union and the List of European countries by area, sixteenth-largest country in Europe by area. Sofia is the nation's capital and List of cities and towns in Bulgaria, largest city; other major cities include Burgas, Plovdiv, and Varna, Bulgaria, Varna. One of the earliest societies in the lands of modern-day Bulgaria was the Karanovo culture (6,500 BC). In the 6th to 3rd century BC, the region was a battleground for ancient Thracians, Persians, Celts and Ancient Macedonians, Macedonians; stability came when the Roman Empire conquered the region in AD 45. After the Roman state splintered, trib ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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New Year's Day
In the Gregorian calendar, New Year's Day is the first day of the calendar year, January 1, 1 January. Most solar calendars, such as the Gregorian and Julian calendars, begin the year regularly at or near the December solstice, northern winter solstice. In contrast, cultures and religions that observe a lunisolar or lunar calendar celebrate their Lunar New Year at varying points relative to the solar year. In pre-Christian Rome, under the Julian calendar, the day was dedicated to Janus, god of gateways and beginnings, for whom January is also named. From Roman times until the mid-18th century, the new year was celebrated at various stages and in various parts of Christian Europe on 25 December, on 1 March, on 25 March and on the Date of Easter, movable feast of Easter. In the present day, with most countries now using the Gregorian calendar as their civil calendar, 1 January according to Gregorian calendar is among the most celebrated of public holidays in the w ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pagan
Paganism (, later 'civilian') is a term first used in the fourth century by early Christians for people in the Roman Empire who practiced polytheism, or ethnic religions other than Christianity, Judaism, and Samaritanism. In the time of the Roman Empire, individuals fell into the pagan class either because they were increasingly rural and provincial relative to the Christian population, or because they were not '' milites Christi'' (soldiers of Christ).J. J. O'Donnell (1977)''Paganus'': Evolution and Use, ''Classical Folia'', 31: 163–69. Alternative terms used in Christian texts were '' hellene'', '' gentile'', and '' heathen''. Ritual sacrifice was an integral part of ancient Greco-Roman religion and was regarded as an indication of whether a person was pagan or Christian. Paganism has broadly connoted the "religion of the peasantry". During and after the Middle Ages, the term ''paganism'' was applied to any non-Christian religion, and the term presumed a belief in f ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Name Days In Bulgaria
Name days in Bulgaria are name days associated with Eastern Orthodox saints. Some names can be celebrated on more than one day. According to the tradition, guests are supposed to come uninvited and the person who has the celebrated name is supposed to be prepared to treat everyone. Today people prefer to invite their guests at home or at a bar or a restaurant. The celebrations are similar to those of birthdays, but usually the food, the music and the feel is somewhat more traditional, and sometimes even religious. January *1 : Vassil, Vesselin, Vasilena (on Vassilyovden) *2 : Silvia *4 : Tihomir *6 : Yordan, Bozhidar, Bogdan (on Bogoyavlenie; Yordanovden) *7 : Ivan, Yoan, Yoana, Ivaylo (on Ivanovden) *11 : Bogdan, Bogdana, Bogomil, Teodosii *12: Tania, Tatiana (on Sveta Tatiana) *14 : Adam, Kalcho, Nina *17 : Anton, Andon, Antonia, Donka, Doncho, Toni, Toncho (on Antonovden) *18 : Atanas, Atanaska, Nasko, Naska, Nacho, Tanyo, Tinka (on Atanasovden) *20 : Evtim *21 : Va ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dogwood
''Cornus'' is a genus of about 30–60 species of woody plants in the family Cornaceae, commonly known as dogwoods or cornels, which can generally be distinguished by their blossoms, berries, and distinctive bark. Most are deciduous trees or shrubs, but a few species are nearly herbaceous perennial subshrubs, and some species are evergreen. Several species have small heads of inconspicuous flowers surrounded by an involucre of large, typically white petal-like bracts, while others have more open clusters of petal-bearing flowers. The various species of dogwood are native throughout much of temperate and boreal Eurasia and North America, with China, Japan, and the southeastern United States being particularly rich in native species. Species include the common dogwood '' Cornus sanguinea'' of Eurasia, the widely cultivated flowering dogwood ''(Cornus florida)'' of eastern North America, the Pacific dogwood '' Cornus nuttallii'' of western North America, the Kousa d ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Popcorn
Popcorn (also called popped corn, popcorns, or pop-corn) is a variety of corn kernel which expands and puffs up when heated. The term also refers to the snack food produced by the expansion. It is one of the oldest snacks, with evidence of popcorn dating back thousands of years in the Americas. It is commonly eaten salted, buttered, sweetened, or with artificial flavorings. A popcorn kernel's strong hull contains the seed's hard, starchy shell endosperm with 14–20% moisture, which turns to steam as the kernel is heated. Pressure from the steam continues to build until the hull ruptures, allowing the kernel to forcefully expand, to 20 to 50 times its original size, and then cool. Some strains of corn ( taxonomized as ''Zea mays'') are cultivated specifically as popping corns. The ''Zea mays'' variety ''everta'', a special kind of flint corn, is the most common of these. Popcorn is one of six major types of corn, which includes dent corn, flint corn, pod corn, flour c ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dried Fruits
Dried fruit is fruit from which the majority of the original water content has been removed prior to cooking or being eaten on its own. Drying may occur either naturally, by sun, through the use of industrial dehydrators, or by freeze drying. Dried fruit has a long tradition of use dating to the fourth millennium BC in Mesopotamia, and is valued for its sweet taste, nutritional content, and long shelf life. In the 21st century, dried fruit consumption is widespread worldwide. Nearly half of dried fruits sold are raisins, followed by dates, prunes, figs, apricots, peaches, apples, and pears. These are referred to as "conventional" or "traditional" dried fruits: fruits that have been dried in the sun or in commercial dryers. Many fruits, such as cranberries, blueberries, cherries, strawberries, and mango are infused with a sweetener (e.g., sucrose syrup) prior to drying. Some products sold as dried fruit, like papaya, kiwifruit and pineapple, are most often candied fruit. Histo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Simit
Simit is a circular bread, typically encrusted with sesame seeds or, less commonly, poppy, flax or sunflower seeds, found across the cuisines of the former Ottoman Empire and the Middle East, especially in Armenia, Turkey and the Balkans. Simit's size, crunch, chewiness, and other characteristics vary slightly by region. In İzmir, simit is known as ''gevrek'' ("crisp"), although it is very similar to the Istanbul variety. Simit in Ankara are smaller and crisper than those of other cities. Name The word ''simit'' comes from Arabic ''samīd'' () "white bread" or "fine flour". Other names are based on the Byzantine Greek ''kollikion'' (κολλίκιον), or Ancient Greek ''kollyra'' (κολλύρα), or Greek ''koulouri'' (κουλούρι). In Latin it is known as ''arculata''. Aramaic: ܩܶܠܽܘܪܳܐ/ܩܸܠܘܿܪܵܐ (''qeluro/qelora)''; Turkish: '' gevrek''; South Slavic ''đevrek'', ђеврек, ''gjevrek'', ѓеврек, геврек. The Armenian name is բոկ� ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cyrillic Script
The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, Mongolic, Uralic languages, Uralic, Caucasian languages, Caucasian and Iranian languages, Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, North Asia, and East Asia, and used by many other minority languages. , around 250 million people in Eurasia use Cyrillic as the official script for their national languages, with Russia accounting for about half of them. With the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Cyrillic became the third official script of the Languages of the European Union#Writing systems, European Union, following the Latin script, Latin and Greek alphabet, Greek alphabets. The Early Cyrillic alphabet was developed during the 9th century AD at the Preslav Literary School in the First Bulga ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ef (Cyrillic)
Ef or Fe (Ф ф; italics: ) is a Cyrillic letter, commonly representing the voiceless labiodental fricative , like the pronunciation of in ''fill'', ''flee'' or ''fall''. The Cyrillic letter Ef is romanized as . History The Cyrillic letter Ef was derived from the Greek letter Phi (Φ φ). It merged with and eliminated the letter Fita (Ѳ) in the Russian alphabet in 1918. The name of Ef in the Early Cyrillic alphabet is ( or ), in later Church Slavonic and Russian form it became (). In the Cyrillic numeral system, Ef has a value of 500. Appearance and usage in Slavic languages The Slavic languages have almost no native words containing . This sound did not exist in Proto-Indo-European (PIE). It arose in Greek and Latin from PIE (which yielded Slavic ). In some instances in Latin, it represented historical th-fronting and derived from Proto-Indo-European . In the Germanic languages, the f sound arose from PIE via Grimm's law, which remained unchanged in Slavic. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Culture Of Bulgaria
A number of ancient civilizations, including the Thracians, ancient Greeks, Scythians, Celts, ancient Romans, Goths (Ostrogoths and Visigoths), Slavs (East and West Slavs), Varangians and the Bulgars have left their mark on the culture, history and heritage of Bulgaria. Due to this great variety of influences, Bulgaria has adopted many unusual traditions. Thracian artifacts include numerous temples, tombs, golden treasures and ancient rites and rituals, while the Bulgars have left traces of their heritage in statehood, early architecture, music and dances. Thracian rituals such as the Tryphon Zarezan which is dedicated to Saint Tryphon of Campsada, Kukeri and Martenitsa are to this day kept alive in the modern Bulgarian culture. The oldest treasure of worked gold in the world, dating back to the 5th millennium BC, comes from the site of the Varna Necropolis. Bulgaria functioned as a cultural hub of Slavic Europe during much of the Middle Ages, exerting considerable litera ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |