Trifon Zarazen - Bulgarian Wine Harvest Holiday

Last night, I went to the Bulgarian Community Center (Chitalishte) celebration of the wine harvest.  This holiday is known as Trifon Zarazen and is celebrated on February 1st (old calender) or February 14th (new calender).  This holiday is to celebrate the clipping of the grape vines to get ready for the new season.  There was a Bulgarian band, several of the members actually played at our wedding.  Check out the Gaida- the Bulgarian bag pipe.  It's made from a animal hide and has several different wooden pipes, one to blow into and several interchangeable ones to play the notes.  Interestingly, the sound is not forced out by the musician blowing into it- though he blows into it to keep it filled with air.  He actually squeezes it with his forearm to play the notes.  He'll then blow into again to keep it topped up.  He's in the gray sweater, just behind the singer.

The drum is played with a stick about the size of a chopstick and another thicker stick, sort of like a wooden spoon.  Whenever there is National Music (Narodni Musika) and a group of Bulgarians- there is horo dancing!  I can never get a good picture of the horo, but here's an example:

This is Pravo Horo- 3 steps forward, kick your left foot, one step back, kick your right foot, hold hands with your arms slightly raised.  You can see the little ones join in early, don't worry if they don't get the steps, they just walk along. 

Typically, in Bulgaria, this holiday is celebrated with wine, a lot of wine.  But here in the states, there was no drinking at this community center, so there was a quiz where bottles of wine were given out as prizes.  I did not win, though my friend did- one question was a yes/no da ili ne question and she shouted out "no" which turned out to be the correct answer. 

It's so fun to celebrate this Bulgarian holidays here in America.  There are Bulgarian cultural groups in many metro areas, when we lived in Pittsburgh, they even had their own community center- their own building!  Its a great way to keep the connection for our child when he/she comes home.  They have celebrations coming up for St. George's Day and Cyril and Metodi Cyrillic Alphabet Day in May. 

I found this group through a friend who also served in the Peace Corps Bulgaria, but you can find many of these groups via the web.  Some Bulgarian cultural groups have list serves on Yahoo or Google, websites and some you can track down via Eastern Orthodox Churches.  This group had a wide range of people, some who were born here, born in Bulgaria, married a Bulgarian, little children, teenagers, grandmothers.  Everyone spoke English, but they enjoy speaking Bulgarian when they get together because they rarely get to in their daily lives.  People were happy to translate, teach the dance steps and explain what the different foods were. 
It was a lot of fun, and when we came out we were surprised to see our cars had a dusting of snow!  We haven't had much snow at all this year.  It was very pretty, but made the drive home slippery.