Happy Baba Marta!!!

I'll take the red and white one.

Today, March 1, used to be celebrated as the first day of the new year.  (This was a long time ago before we moved all New Year's celebrations to Dec. 31/Jan. 1 to co-incide with the broadcast of Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin Eve program.)  Back then, and since it was before Dick Clark this must have been 800 or a 1000 years ago at least, spring was the beginning of the new year and March 1 was when they expected spring to get here.

In modern times, the Bulgarians still celebrate this holiday that isn't, but now they refer to it as Baba Marta day.  "Baba Marta" is roughly translated as "Grandma March."  And if you want the mythical Grandma March to bring you favor, as we all surely do, you wear a martenitsa on your wrist or elsewhere starting on March 1 until either March 22 or until you see a stork or until you see a tree with new buds on it.  This please Grandma March.  Good luck automatically ensues.

Mark's dainty wrist models the martenitsa.

There are not a lot of rules about what a martenitsa looks like other than that it must be red and white.  This is necessary to pay homage to a falcon that helped Huba find her brother Khan Asparuh in the new land called Bulgaria.  Or something like that.  Anyway, as long as you got that part down, the rest is up to the creativity of the ... martenista?  And there are many of them.  Craftspeople set up tables all around the pedestrian areas of town to peddle their martenitsas.