First of March for many of you means the start of spring and it is, from a calendar point of view. As you may have seen, I go by nature calendar and I strongly believe that spring comes, for real with the spring equinox, this year it will be on the 20th of March.

Today I wanted to give you a little story about what the beginning of March means in my home country, Romania.

On the 1st of March, we celebrate “Mărțișor” which would be translated as a “small March” and it is a day when boys give a “Mărțișor”  to girls or girls give each other. 

The “Mărțișor” is a red and white intertwined string. In the countryside, people used to hand this string to their gates or windows for protection, in time it got “updated” to come with a little amulet-like item or a broch and we pin it to our blouse and wear it for 12 days. After that, the red and white string would hang on a tree that blooms so that is how you will be for the year. I also used to wear the string as a bracelet, my favourite way and when it broke, I would put it on a tree or on a flower.

This image I got this from my mom as a wish and it shows a spring flower tied with string and says: “1st of March…The red string may bring you health, the white one prosperity and may God give you everything!” ‘Have a beautiful spring!”

This is a modern digital version of sending someone a “Mărțișor” :).

This tradition has been dated from the Dacian times but also has been debated to be coming from the Romans. 

There are also many legends about where red and white come from, my favourite being the one where the Sun came to Earth as a beautiful maiden but a dragon – Zmeu in Romanian – stole her and locked her in a dungeon. The whole world went quiet, plants were dying, birds stopped singing, and nature just stopped. So this young courageous boy went and fought the dragon, days and nights. He defeated it and brought back the Sun but his wounds were deep and his blood was flowing on the snow.

The blood on the white snow and the success of the brave young man is still celebrated today by wearing the red-white thread on the chest when spring comes.

Do you have spring-coming traditions?

I wish you a blooming season!