A little cultural treat

Oh, lovely cards Stradee and MsOlga.

I've got someone at work who could translate the card on Monday, MsOlga.

Oh, please bring that Christmas bit/post over to my "cultural treat" thread, nimh.

We're sharing Advent and Christmas traditions, and that would be a beautiful example of sharing.

According to the ethnological study in Relations of Compatibility and Incompatibility.., however, the conclusion about the ethnical component of Bulgarian village mentality should be a wholly different one. There was and is, the thesis is here, a 'system of coexistence' between christians and muslims in the Bulgarian village, in which both parties respect the difference of the other and expresses that in traditional conventions of exchange and tribute. The ethnologists have recorded these conventions exhaustively. The groups share the village in which they live in patterns of day-to-day life passed on from generation to generation, and in the confidence that both parties will rebuff any infringement of these relations.

This system of coexistence rests on several pillars. The exchange of gifts at religious feasts, mutual visits at marriage and birth and the presence at funerals (and participation therein according to each others traditions) make the religious difference a familiar one. In this mutual involvement, the boundary between the groups is made unproblematic and yet cultivated. In the northern Rhodopes, for example, the muslims take it upon themselves to serve the guests at christian marriages and the christians do the same at islamic marriages. Sometimes, too, the boundary is stretched a little for the benefit of pleasant relations - drinking is done together (alcoholism is a problem among muslims too), and so is eating. Moreover one participates in each other's feasts - one third of the muslims in Bulgaria celebrates Christmas. As one muslim from Konoush, who on the eve of Christmas was readying himself to slaughter the pig of the priest, summarized it: "We are going to become Christians for 40 days now. We eat pork and drink wine. After that we'll be Muslims again". And finally, religion itself is a bridge, because an underlying 'spiritual map', dating from pagan times, is also shared. The faithful of both confessions share the same superstitions and believe in the same healing powers and sanctity of the same places - and thus, Bulgarian muslims stay overnight in the Saint Nicholas Church, and christians visit the Demir Baba Teke.