Christmas in Bulgaria

After christmas gifts, traditional TV shows and lots and lots of food, it seems like Christmas if finally over, and so are my good excuses for not blogging. After all, on does not want to be online when Santa Claus is coming to town, right?

By the way, it seems like Teheran is burning, again. I guess that is what everyone should be blogging about these days (or maybe democracy in China), but others have done it better than I ever will, so I advice you to read them in stead. My thoughts are with the young and old in Iran who risk their lives for freedoms that we take for granted. One day they will win, let'shope it will be soon.

Around here, nothing is burning, not even the stove. I have restricted my activity to eating, not cooking, and two times I get surprised when the food simply appears on the table, not really understanding when and how it was prepared.

Altough christmas traditions in general are quite similar between Bulgarian and Sweden these days, the christmas food is not. No ham, not 14 different sweet salads made of cabbage, neither meatballs nor herring. Here you have a traditional meal which is purely vegetarian, since the lent that comes before any holiday in Christianity is broken at midnight between 24th and 25th. If you like, there is a mass to go to at midnight, but it is nothing I have so far been involved in. We'll see in the future... I do have a soft spot for religious awakening ;)

The most important part of the vegetarian christmas table is probably the pitka, a round, decorated wheat bread. The oldest man in the household breaks it, one part for Jesus, and one part or each family member. Somewhere in this pitka a coin is hidden, and on the one who gets the sun will shine for the year to come. Guess who got it this year! Maladets!

Actually Christmas in Bulgaria doesn't really start before the 25th of December which means that yo have to stay up until midnight on christmas eve, nothing that I am used to from Sweden. First then you can say "Happy Christmas", something I had difficult to get used to my first year here. Interestingly I think I heard "happy christmas" several times before christmas this year... have this become less important in three yeas?

To make you sit up until midnight the Bulgarian TV provides some feel-good christmas films, of course. This year it was Love actually, which it was also in 2007. Could this be the birth of a tradition like Donald Duck on a Swedish Christmas eve?

And so the days go, in a quite predictable manner, including family dinners, café meetings with friends, and visits at relatives. I have found it perfectly relaxing to celebrate with a family that is not your own.The same warmth, but a little less complicated relationships... you somehow get to pick the cherries from the cake, to eat the cake and to keep it. But that's exactly how lucky you get when you find the coin in the pitka.