A candle, a pinch of incense and a cup of red wine poured straight onto the grave: many families will take these to the cemetery today for Archangel's Memorial Saturday, held on the Saturday before St Michael's Day (Archangelovden). This year it falls the day before the feast.
It is also called Men's Memorial Saturday, and people honour soldiers killed in wars. Relatives clean the graves before they light the candles. A priest often reads a short memorial service.
Wheat, bread and favourite dishes on the table
For the remembrance, people have boiled wheat, known as kolivo, blessed and hand it out with bread or small loaves. Wine, fruit and sweets go with them, and in some regions people also give out meat. Whoever hands out the offering must say who it is for, with the words "May God forgive".
Many families sit down to a shared meal, most often right in the cemetery. They also put the dead person's favourite dishes on the table. Folk belief says some of the wine should be poured out in memory of the dead. A priest from Breznik, quoted by BTA, advises people not to leave food on the graves but to give it away as alms, because graves are holy places and must be kept clean.
No washing and no weddings
By tradition, people do no heavy housework on a memorial Saturday, such as washing or cleaning. They hold no noisy parties and no weddings. Belief has it that if a fly or a butterfly flies around a person, it is the soul of a dead person coming to visit them.
The martyrs of Melitene
The Church today also honours the 33 holy martyrs of Melitene in Asia Minor, now Malatya in Turkey. St Hieron of the city of Tyana in Cappadocia led the group. They died in the persecutions under the emperors Diocletian and Maximian, in the late 3rd and early 4th century.
According to the saint's life story, the governor Lysias forced Christians to worship idols and serve in the army. Hieron refused to serve with the pagans and drove off the soldiers who came for him. They later seized him and locked him up in Melitene with other Christians. There he urged them not to worship idols. Lysias ordered his right arm cut off at the elbow, and after the torture all of them were sentenced to beheading.
Chrysanthus bought Hieron's head and later built a church where the martyrs died. The same day is the feast of St Lazarus of Galesios. He lived as a pillar saint on Mount Galesios near Ephesus and built a church there to the Resurrection of Christ. He died in 1053.
7 November is also International Medical Physics Day. On this date in 1959, Bulgarian television made its first live broadcast. Regular broadcasting began on 26 December 1959. Tomorrow, Sunday, the Church celebrates the Synaxis of the Archangel Michael and the other bodiless powers.