Why do Flowers meet with green willow branches? What is prohibited on Palm Sunday. Old Romanian traditions and beliefs

The flowers are on April 28 in 2024. But what happens then? Willow everywhere – and less often nettles – consecrations at the church, for a special day in the calendar. What is forbidden on Palm Sunday? What are the traditions and beliefs of Florii. What are the unusual traditions?

Flowers and the “hard time” of the holiday

When were the Flowers earliest in the year? But when did they “fail” at the latest? Six years ago the Flowers were celebrated on April 1st, while this year they are much later: on April 28th. Flowers can never be sooner than March 28th, nor later than May 1st.

• “Palm Sunday is the most important celebration of Easter Lent because it reminds Christians of the moment when the Savior decided to face his adversaries. We could say that, starting from this day, we enter the great time of the celebration, remembering and spiritually experiencing His passions”, writes Narcisa Știucă in the volume Spirala Sărbătorilor – Rottos, taluci și dlusășuris. The willow is the vegetal “emblem” of this celebration, being the first tree to turn green.

And the time of Florii, as in the case of other holidays, was considered magical and that is why various rituals were practiced to try to influence the future.

Here are examples given by Gh Ciaușanu, in a book about beliefs and superstitions, in 1911:

• “The peasant keeps the willow branch from Florii after the icon, and always in the summer, when there is a storm, he takes the branch and puts it in the middle of the house to protect it from lightning. Many walk warm, all year round, over the middle on the skin with a wreath of willow saplings from Florii, for saddle pain and snake bite”.

Ciaușanu gives several examples of how the “pillars”, i.e. the leafy willow branches that were shared at church, by the Florii, were taken home and then believed to defend against many dangers throughout the year.

Flowers – The day when green branches are sanctified and graves are cleaned

The flowers are “a celebration on the Sunday before Easter commemorating Christ’s entry into Jerusalem and at which it is customary to hold willow branches (mitișori) in the hand”, said a DEX from the interwar period. (source dexonline)

In some areas, because the nettles bloomed, the Day of Flowers was also called the “Wedding of the Nettles”, writes Ion Ghinoiu in “Dictionary of Romanian Mythology”. He mentions another local custom: the Martișor received on March 1 is taken out and hung in a vine or any flowering tree. In some houses, the bride’s clothes and dowry were removed.

In restricted areas, girls would pick a plant called “rush” and used in love charms.

The flowers are personifications of the flowers celebrated on the Sunday that bears their name, Palm Sunday, over which the Christian Church superimposed the celebration of the triumphal entry of the Lord Jesus into Jerusalem, writes Ion Ghinoiu.

“As mythical representations, the Flowers are identified in Roman mythology with the Goddess Flora, frequently attested by archaeologists in Roman Dacia. New meanings were added to the revival of nature, when plants, willows and fruit trees bloom, especially those related to the cult of grandparents and ancestors. On this day, memorials are made, graves and cemeteries are cleaned, willow branches are stuck in graves, the spirits of the dead are invoked”, writes Ion Ghinoiu.

The willow branch consecrated in the church is a symbol of chastity and the annual rebirth of vegetation. With palm branches, identified by Christians with willow branches, the Jews welcomed Jesus upon his triumphant entry into Jerusalem.

The blooming willow branches consecrated on Palm Sunday had various uses: they decorated the icons, crosses, tombs, trinkets, windows, doors and gates of houses; they provided magical protection and warded off evil spirits; they are given to cattle to be eaten so that they may multiply; they are stuck in the earth of the holds or hung in fruit trees and vines to give them rich fruit; they prevent saddle pains during the harvest if women and men get hot with them; they stop storms and hailstorms during the summer; helps to catch spells and charms etc.

Willow branches were placed on the icon and used in times of year, such as sickness, drought or hail. So, these sanctified branches were sometimes used for spells, other times they were used as “medicine” and to protect the house and the animals in the household from evil.

Here is what Artur Gorovei wrote over a century ago about Florii traditions, with expressions from 1915:

“On the Day of the Flower, holy sticks are swallowed in order to be relieved of the pain of lumps (neck no). It is also then that the cattle are touched with sanctified teats, so that the cattle over the year will be in bloom, i.e. beautiful. The sticks are also kept in the summer, during thunderstorms, lightning and hail, a sprig of them is put on the fire and it is believed that their smoke disperses the thunderstorms, lightning and hail. As it will be on Palm Sunday, so it will be on Easter” (Straja, Suceava).

“The willow saplings (willow no) from the church on Palm Sunday are not put in the house, but left outside, under the eaves of the house” (Preutești, Suceava)

The flowers and carol with willow branches

At Florii, in some villages in Oltenia, children caroled with green willow branches, and women, at Circovii Marinei (July 16-18), made a circle of willow branches through which the sick passed for healing. The willow crowns were sacred objects with which the girls kissed each other when they were married, and sometimes they were worn on the head of the Frog. Locally, on the Day of Flowers, the martisor given as a gift on March 1 was taken out to be hung in a rose bush or a flowering tree (Ion Ghinoiu).

The Day of Flowers is also special in that it is a day of “disengagement” from Fish during Lent, a fast that has a total of 48 days and which offers only two days in which you can eat fish (the other is the day of the Annunciation, March 25). The breaking of the fish has a rich symbolism in Orthodoxy and is not a violation of the fast, but should be seen as a comfort given to the faithful.

Flowers and an old tradition of sorcovit

Here is what Narcisa Șiucă writes about the “Time of Flowers”

“The sixth week of Great Lent is entirely under the sign of the rebirth of nature. Its last days, Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday, are celebrations of joy marked by customs whose protagonists are children.

Basically, the children sing and bring home spring flowers, but also green willow branches, consecrated at the church. “Just like on the eve of the new year, when they walk with Sorcova, they touch the hosts and all the family members with these green branches, bringing health, vigor and eternal youth”

The author also describes a custom called “Lăzărița”, a kind of “wedding death game” in the villages of the southeast of the country. Basically, a little girl adorned like a bride, measures the length and breadth of the host’s yard, miming anxiety and pain, waiting for the bridegroom gone to the forest, while the group sings a sad song.

Lazarel is a strange character, barely outlined and “seems to be a spirit of vegetation whose premature death is attributed to or birth at an unfavorable moment”, Narcisa Știucă also writes.

The author also writes about the Antiquity correspondent of this holiday:

“A celebration of the rebirth of nature and the display of its plant splendours, of harmony and love, this day of unquestionable Christian significance had a festive counterpart in Antiquity. Floralia, the month of April, was dedicated to the Sabine goddess Flora, who ruled over all flowers and seeds, who had given honey to humans and soothed Juno’s anger by helping him to conceive – from the scent of a miraculous flower – the god Mars, the patron of the first month of spring”.

Here is what Irina Nicolau writes in the “Guide to Romanian Holidays” about other Florii traditions.

• “On Palm Sunday, people are allowed to eat fish. They go to church carrying flowers and return carrying willow sprigs. They touch the children, the cattle of the household with the willow and put it on the icon: in a year it gets all kinds of uses. Even now, the weeds that will be used to dye the eggs are being boiled. As the weather is at Florii, so it will be at Easter. There are places where on this day people do not wash their heads, for fear of turning white (red) like trees in bloom. In other parts, they wash their heads on this very day, but with water in which they boiled basil and threads from the hems of a flag that was carried to a funeral of a big girl. To benefit the hair, to make it shine with health, water must be poured at the root of a hair.

Palm Sunday for the Orthodox – Why does Jesus come to Jerusalem?

A week before His Passion, our Lord Jesus Christ entered Jerusalem, on a donkey surrounded by the 12 apostles. The crowd, recognizing Him as the true Savior, greeted Him with palm branches and songs of joy, explains krestin-ortodox.ro.

From a liturgical point of view, from this day begins the Week of the Passions, in memory of which the churches celebrate the Denies every evening, services through which the faithful spend Christ on the way of the Cross, until his death and Resurrection.

Why does Jesus come to Jerusalem? Jewish law required every Jew to go at least once a year to the temple in Jerusalem to offer sacrifices to God. The Savior comes to fulfill the prophecy and to call the Jews to Himself.

His triumphal entry into Jerusalem would reveal that He is the awaited Messiah, that the people no longer have to wait for another King, but to show them that He is a different King, unlike those known in history. For this reason He did not enter on a horse, as befits a king, but on a donkey, as a sign of not accepting the worldly throne.

The Jerusalem into which Christ entered is the image of the heavenly Jerusalem, where the Son reigns eternally together with the Father and the Spirit and prefigures the New Jerusalem – the Church, in which He will always be present through the Holy Spirit.