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Vitanovtsi Village

10.05.20193 min read111 comments
Written by СНЦ "Локално наследство"

Vitanovtsi village is located 7 km northwest of Pernik town between Lyulin, Viskyar and Lyubash Mountains.

One of the participants in the survakari group – Boncho Pavlov, for many years disguises like a priest and recounts the time when he started:

“I wasn’t married at that time, I was still a bachelor. We gathered on the evening and disguised in the school. We slept there overnight and prepared there. Sometimes we even went to the empty house of granny Tsana, nobody lived there and for that reason, we gathered there to prepare during the night. Everyone would make his own mask at home prior to the event. There were masks with leather and masks with feathers. And the children would mostly disguise as gypsies. We would paint our faces with the soot from the stove to blacken them.

We went out early in the morning, it was still dark outside. Nowadays, they get out much later, about eight o’clock. And we started while it was still dark – about six and a half – seven. We started from the lower neighborhood, passed from house to house, stopped in every yard and continued along the whole street, visiting all the houses. Then we went to Geren neighborhood and afterwards went back along the main street. This way we visited the whole village. The hosts gave us gifts – brandy (rakia), meat. At that time, all the households would raise pigs and there was plenty of meat, and we, the survakars, sometimes would gather up to two buckets of meat.

At the end, we stopped here in front of the school and we performed a “wedding” in the manner it used to be in the past. A “wedding ceremony”, a “prayer”, songs, dances… There was a “bride” in the group, a “bridegroom”, “mother-in-law”, “father-in-law”, “best man”. They were dressed in the local sleeveless dresses with silk kerchiefs on their heads. We give the “bride” a pitcher and take her to the fountain to fill water in it and we have put some coins in it, as on a real wedding. She would strike the pitcher in the fountain, the pitcher breaks and the children rummage in the trough to pick up the coins.

On the eve of 14 January, when we have went around the whole village and have performed the “wedding ceremony” in front of the school, we went to the local pub. There we would put the pieces of meat on a big stove. On Surova it is obligatory to prepare varivo – meat with cabbage. We cut the cabbage and over it we put the meat pieces.

We celebrated quite nice Surova, here in Vitanovtsi, that is the way we call the feast – Surova. We still celebrate it like that every year, we don’t miss it.”

Later on Boncho Pavlov stopped masking because of failing health. Then his son “became keen” on disguising. He came into his “inheritance” and started playing a “priest” in the group. The grandchildren and the daughter-in-law also participate as a “young priest”/“young sexton” and a “nun”. Several years in turn the whole family disguises as a “priest’s family”. They perform the same on the festival in Pernik.

Recorded in 2018

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