ROMA PEOPLE CELEBRATE ST. GEORGE’S DAY TODAY

SARAJEVO, MAY 6 (ONASA) – Today, Roma celebrate St. George’s Day, one of the biggest Roma holidays, with which they bid farewell to winter and celebrate the arrival of spring.
For years, the Roma in Visoko have been maintaining the tradition that the day before St. George’s Day they go to the village of Carica, to a natural water source surrounded by greenery.
Biserka Halilović, an activist of a non-governmental association from Visoko, said that St. George’s Day is their traditional holiday, which is celebrated in a specific way in Visoko.
He tells how the day before they go to the village of Carica, where they draw spring water that they take home and wash with on St. George’s Day. They also pick dogwood and willow sticks.
It is customary that on that day, everyone who comes to Carica settlement brings as many red cloths from home as there are members in the family.
Halilović says that they tie those red cloths to the branches of a dogwood tree or to a willow tree, for each person in the family, while saying: ‘I leave illness, I take health’. Roma in Visoko believe that it brings health to the family.
After that, they pick dogwood or willow twigs and pour water from the spring.
On the morning of St. George’s Day, we wake up early and wash ourselves with water that we brought from the spring. With the rods we brought home, we gently hit family members and tell them to be healthy as dogwood – says Halilović.
He says that they paint eggs usually with onion skins and embers, so that the egg gets a red color, which is associated with joy.
It is said that the night before St. George’s Day, after the party in Carica, people come home and usually the youth welcome the morning with fire and music.
We wake up early in the morning, light the grills. Usually there is also a rich meal. Today everything is a little different. Nothing is like it used to be anymore, but we still continue every year to welcome St. George’s Day in the same way as we have been until now. This is our tradition, which we inherited from our ancestors and which we continue – concluded Halilović.