Yordanov Den (St Jordans day), I Love It

I love this, my name day is a day devoted to the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan river & is one of the greatest of the calendar of saints! See this blog post http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=5304473842828883848&postID=954272307849518269
It is a day of enlightenment and light and is celebrated by vodosvet -water is sanctified and after the ritual the priest throws the cross in the river or the sea. The men at the bridge dive after the cross to draw it out from the cold water. It is believed that if the cross freezes in the water the year will be fertile and the people will be healthy. Taken from http://www.paylessbg.com/en/articles/Yordanov-Day/31/index.html
I love my name & its meaning & even more now we live here it has more added to it & as Im a Christian I am very chuffed!
Well I had a lovely evening on my name day with my Bulgarian family, it was a very happy evening & I will  definitely be celebrating this every year. Yovo, Pavlinka & anton were all really happy & were joyful & laughing all evening, such a light hearted night. They bought me a present too, a camping gas kettle which we will make good use of in September when we camp over night at Trinity rocks farm for the music fest. I am really looking forward to that!
First up was salad, olives & Rakia, Pavlinka baked one of her amazing Bahnitza's & we devoured the lot
I made traditional Bulgarian meatball soup, one of our very favourite Bulgarian dishes, which they loved. I put a little chilli in & they mentioned it was a bit hot, although for the first time in the last 5 yrs they never stopped to talk or let it get cold! That soup was devoured in a non stop soup fest :-) A compliment indeed!  I served this with my own mixed pepper bread, again they loved it & Yovo kept asking about me making it myself. I love to see them enjoy my cooking as they are very traditional people. When I make something like the bread I  never forget to tell them its made from the produce we grew, this makes it OK & becomes Joanna's traditional Bulgarian whatever, so the fact the bread was homemade, with peppers from the garden, this made it very acceptable, brilliant! Although the soup was very filling I obviously served cake for dessert, they love their cake as do we. I was delighted to find I had plenty in the freezer so there was a selection with Plum muffins, apple & cinnamon cake, grape cake & PumpkinMuffins with a liberal helping of cream.......
I would post photos but my laptop, with said photos, is currently broken, Iwill post asap.....

The Bulgarian Name Day

Saturday 7th January is my nameday, I share this day with Yovo, English equivalent John, & also my mum Joan. So if your name is John, Joan, Joanna, Joanne, Jonathan etc, you now know your day! My Bulgarian name is Yoana, Ioana or Ivanka. All the names sharing this day are; Ioan, Ioana, Yoan, Yoana, Ivan, Ivanka, Ivayla, Ivaylo, Ivet, Kaloian, Kaloyan, Vanya, Vanyo, Zhan, Zhana.
This is also the birthday of two of my friends & my daughter in law. I am a bit remiss, yet again, as I have dipped out again, I keep forgetting, but next year I will try to remember to organise something ahead of time. This year though I will have to settle for inviting Yovo around with his family & do the cooking, I will bake us a cake & break out the homemade cherry brandy, see what he thinks!

Anton, Me, Yovo, Pavlinka & Nigel

The Nameday
As well as a birthday Bulgarians also celebrate a nameday. They reason you are named at birth and that stays with you all your life. If you celebrate the day you were born, why not celebrate your name too?

The Bulgarian nameday recognises the meaning of your name. The name will come from the  name of a saint, from a long tradition, or from historical events. The nameday is either the birthday of the saint, or the time of the year connected to the meaning, or the name of the holiday the person is born on. It can be quite difficult to understand! My name means God is gracious, it appeared in the bible Luke 8:3 She was a disciple of Jesus & a friend of Mary Magdalene. I love that my name was one of a tiny number of women disciples that Jesus would have seen as special to him! There is also a type of butterfly called Joanna & off course the Joanna is slang for the piano, all good as far as I am concerned as I am from London so the slang is relevant, I love butterflies & find them a very feminine thing, again relevant & I love God, so I love the meaning & it makes my name, mine & special to me

In Bulgaria the name is thought the most important characteristic of a person. We have a saying "Clothes maketh the man", the Bulgarians say "Тhe name makes the man".  
In the past people didn’t know the exact date of their birth, so they used the Orthodox calendar and the holidays on it. They would say they were born on Holy Virgin’s Day or St. Demetrius’ Day, before grape-picking  or around threshing time. According to legend each person has a guardian, a spirit guiding them in life, protecting them from evil, helping him to do good actions. After death the spirit accompanies the soul to the other world and presents it before God. During their lifetime the guardian-spirit sits on the right shoulder of the person. On the left side sits the devil’s messenger encouraging them to do evil things. If the guardian-spirit is weak, the person becomes bad or very ill. If the spirit is strong  the person is kind, healthy & good. The older  Bulgarian believes that on their nameday they must honor their guardian, as it was they, that told their parents what name to give them.
In Bulgarian tradition on your friends nameday you can pull their ears or pour cold water on their head. Bulgarians still practice this tradition!
As I mentioned earlier its Sue's birthday tomorrow & as we have a bad weather warning for snow arriving today & tomorrow we celebrated last night. We have found a nice local restaurant which is about the same distance for both of us. Its probably better during the day, due to different chef's we think, and not as good as the restaurant in Borovo, but it's fine for in the winter months & for lunch on market day.
We had a great evening & shared the place with a large table of British ex pats. The time flew by & we were there over 4 hours, perhaps we are becoming Bulgarian ;-D