It was the first year my mother didn’t give me a martenitsa. So last year, my first year away at college, was strange. Like Nikolov, most of my Baba Marta experience centers around friends and family. “I do dinner with my grandparents, so we celebrate everything together like a mishmash,” a type of Bulgarian food. “We pass around martenitsi and I give a couple as gifts to my roommates,” Nikolov said. Kristian Nikolov, a Tandon senior studying computer science and engineering, doesn’t celebrate it much. My mother clung very closely to her Bulgarian roots, but not everyone celebrates to the same extent. I’m still working on interpreting that one. I went to Party City that day to get a balloon, but the cashier refused to get it for me. However that date goes for us - be it good news, the weather, how you choose to dress - is how the rest of the year will go for us. At the beginning of the month, we choose a date. She even managed to get my very stubborn, very Irish father to do it. My mother taught me a variation of that tradition that I have yet to hear anywhere else. Don’t ask how - just know that Bulgarian people tend to be very superstitious. When you take them out, you can interpret them to see how your year will go. You can also choose to put them under a rock for a day. In my family, we hang them on the first budding trees at the end of the month. There are variations of what you can do with martenitsa. My mother never told me why we chose red and white, but I found out later that red is for fertility and white is for strength. We gift them to each other on the first of the month, and if they’re bracelets, we wear them until April. Martenitsi - or martenichki, when you want to say they’re cute - are decorations made of red and white string, either in the form of a bracelet or two little dolls. “It’s for luck for the new year,” she explained as she tied it around my wrist. I remember being particularly confused when my mother gave me my first martenitsa. Though I’ve never been to Bulgaria, I grew up immersed in the culture. Coincidentally, she settled on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, a place with a surprisingly high concentration of Bulgarian people. My mother emigrated to the United States when she was in her early 20s, with only one suitcase and no connections to anybody here. By the end of the month, though, she has calmed down, and it’s time for spring to begin in earnest.

Finally, she gets so fed up with them that on March 1, she whirls up a big storm and blows them away. Her older brothers, Big Sechko and Little Sechko - January and February, respectively - are always playing tricks on her and getting on her nerves. Baba Marta is an old grouchy woman who lives up in the Rhodope Mountains. My mother Evelina, who was born in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, told me this version when I was 6 years old.

Her story originated from the Balkan pagan tradition and it comes in many variations. We celebrate her arrival on March 1 with the greeting, “Chestita Baba Marta, ” which essentially means “Happy March!” We keep honoring her until the end of the month.

Literally “Grandmother March,” Baba Marta is the personification of the month that signifies the beginning of springtime. Bulgarian culture has a name for that: Baba Marta. It’s the month that bridges the gap between winter and spring, and it’s so temperamental that 70-degree weather turns to hail in a matter of hours. We watch the snow give way to budding tree branches, get buffeted by the cold wind tunnels between tall buildings, and, this year, even got somewhat of a spring break.

Baba marta celebrate in bg image