Babinden

The day after Ivanovo Day in Bulgaria, people celebrate Babinden. This is an ancient holiday, preserved to this day from pagan times. It is dedicated to village midwives who in the old days helped with childbirth. It is usually perceived as a kind of female response to specifically male feasts Epiphany and Ivanovd.

Early in the morning, the old midwife is visited by women whose children are aged 1 to 3 years. There in the yard, under a fruit tree, a ritual of washing hands is performed. Young women who took with them a bucket of clean water, soap and a new towel, water the midwife to wash her hands, and then give her a towel, which she accepts as a gift (also as a gift to the midwife is brought clothes, canvas - all this is put on her right shoulder). In this ritual, the old woman tries to raise as much spray as possible upwards with a pretext so that the woman's child runs and jumps in good health.

For her part, the old woman also gives mothers baby socks and shirts, and if the mother came and the child, she ties a coin or a figure of a horse into his hand with woven threads (red and white).

On this day, all women gather for lunch with a midwife. Each brings wine, rakia, cooked chicken and ceremonial bread and kisses the hostess’ hand at the entrance to the house. At the table, everyone is having fun, joking, conversations are almost always filled with sexual overtones. The midwife herself sometimes performs rituals that should help women have more children. At this feast, men are forbidden to enter, but at some point they appear in the house of the old woman, dressed with oxen with horns with a pre-prepared bucket or cart, take the old woman, push her into the bucket or put her on a cart and take her to the river, where they bathe in water. This ritual bathing of the midwife is done so that in the new year she was healthy and strong.

The festival ends in the evening with fun and dancing in the square.