Winter traditions in Romania and Bulgaria

What’s actually happening on the ground in Romania and Bulgaria over the winter holidays, beyond a few strings of lights in a main square? Quite a lot, it turns out, and most of it has nothing to do with tourists. These are traditions families keep because their parents kept them, not because there’s a market for them – which is exactly what makes them worth planning a trip around.

My wife, Zoe, grew up with the Bulgarian half of this list, I grew up with the Romanian half, and between us we’ve seen most of what’s below more than once. Here’s what actually happens, when, and – for the events open to visitors – how to see it properly, plus a couple of corrections to how we described some of this ourselves last time.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

In Romania, Christmas is preceded by Postul Crăciunului, the Nativity Fast – forty days of no meat or dairy that end on Christmas Eve. Families sit down together, exchange gifts, and many still attend the midnight liturgy either before or after eating, depending on the region and how strictly the household keeps the fast.

Colindatul, caroling, is the part a visitor is most likely to actually witness. Groups of children, and sometimes adults, go house to house through the evening of the 24th singing colinde in exchange for money, nuts, apples, or, increasingly, just candy. Some of these songs predate Christianity in the region by a long way and were absorbed into the holiday rather than written for it.

Bulgaria’s version, koleduvane, works almost identically, and the two words share a root – koleda is simply the Bulgarian word for Christmas, and both colindă and koleda trace back to the same Latin “calendae.” Groups of young men, kolyadari, go house to house on Christmas Eve night singing blessings for health and a good harvest, and are traditionally given kravai, a ring-shaped bread, or money in return.

One genuine difference between the two countries: Bulgaria’s Christmas Eve dinner, Budni vecher, is traditionally entirely meatless and made up of an odd number of dishes – often seven, nine, or eleven, since an even number at the table that night is considered unlucky. Romanian Christmas Eve tends to ease out of the fast more gradually, and the meat-heavy dishes further down this article are more a Christmas Day thing than a Christmas Eve one in most Romanian households I know.

The Christmas markets in both countries’ main towns are where all of this becomes visible to a visitor with no invitation to anyone’s home, and they’re worth the trip on their own even without a family to eat with.

Saint Nicholas Day, December 6th

Saint Nicholas Day opens the season properly, honoring the patron saint of children, sailors, and merchants. In both countries, Moș Nicolae (Romania) or Sveti Nikolay (Bulgaria) is said to visit during the night of the 5th, and children leave shoes or boots by the window to be filled with small gifts and sweets by morning.

Worth knowing: this is a separate figure from Moș Crăciun or Dyado Koleda (Santa Claus), the gift-bringer who comes nearly three weeks later – Romanian and Bulgarian children often get two distinct rounds of small gifts inside the same month, which surprises visitors who assume it’s the same character twice.

In Bulgaria, this whole calendar is a fairly recent revival – during the communist decades (1944 to 1989), Christmas was downplayed as a religious holiday, and children received their presents from Dyado Mraz (Grandfather Frost, a secular figure borrowed from the Soviet New Year) on the 31st of December instead. Dyado Koleda only came back into common use after 1989.

In Bulgaria, Saint Nicholas Day (Nikulden) also has its own food tradition: families prepare fish, usually carp, as the centerpiece of the meal, since the fasting rules for that day allow fish even during the stricter pre-Christmas weeks. Processions and charity collections are common in both countries around this date, with churches and community groups gathering donations for families who’d otherwise go without.

New Year’s Eve and Day

The days around New Year are where Romanian and Bulgarian traditions overlap the most, and not by coincidence – a lot of it shares the same pre-Christian root.

Sorcova, in Romania, and survakane (survachka), in Bulgaria, are close enough to be the same custom under two names – both are generally traced back to the same old Slavic word, “surva.” Children in Romania, or young men in Bulgaria, tap family, friends, and neighbors on the back with a decorated stick – a twig wrapped in colored paper and paper flowers for a Romanian sorcova, a plain dogwood branch for a Bulgarian survachka – reciting a short rhyming wish for health and prosperity, in exchange for small change or sweets.

Alongside Sorcova, Romanian villages, especially in Bucovina and Moldavia, put on Capra (the goat), where a performer wears an elaborate wooden goat’s head with jaws that snap on a hinge, and Plugușorul (the little plough), a chanted ritual performed with an actual plough, whip-cracking, and bells, wishing the household a good harvest for the year ahead. Both are meant to be loud, and both are considerably older than Christianity in the region.

The most theatrical version of this, if you want to plan a trip around it, is the Bear Dance (Jocul Urșilor) in Comănești, in the Trotuș Valley of Bacău county, in Moldavia. Groups wearing bear pelts, some real and passed down through families for generations, weighing up to 50 kg, parade through town to drumbeats between Christmas and New Year, with the biggest parade usually falling on December 30th. One thing worth knowing going in: the real-fur costumes are a genuine point of debate even within Romania, and some groups have switched to painted sheepskin or synthetic alternatives instead – both versions are present at the same event, so it’s worth knowing which you’re looking at if it matters to you.

Banitsa’s fortunes, in Bulgaria, is a New Year’s tradition baked into the meal rather than performed in the street: small paper fortunes, for health, wealth, love, or luck, and sometimes a coin or a small dogwood twig, get baked into a banitsa, and everyone at the table takes a blind slice – whoever gets the coin is expected to have the better year.

On New Year’s morning in Bulgaria, survakari – the children and young men doing the rounds described above – are joined over the following weeks by kukeri: adult men in enormous handmade wooden or leather masks and heavy waist bells, whose job is to physically stomp and clang the old year’s evil spirits out of the village.

The two are related but distinct – survakari do the door-to-door well-wishing, kukeri perform the larger, louder masquerade. To see kukeri at scale rather than catch a village performance by luck, the International Festival of Masquerade Games (Surva) in Pernik, about 40 minutes from Sofia by car or under an hour by train, runs for roughly ten days in mid-to-late January and draws thousands of performers from across the country. It’s free to attend and is recognized by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage.

Epiphany and the river dance

Epiphany, on January 6th, closes out the season in both countries around the same underlying ritual: a priest blesses a body of water and throws in a cross, and whoever retrieves it is believed to be protected from illness for the year ahead. In Romania it’s Bobotează; in Bulgaria, Bogoyavlenie, though it’s more commonly called Yordanovden.

Most towns keep this brief and quiet – a blessing at the local river or lake, sometimes just a queue for holy water at the church rather than a dramatic plunge. The exception, and the one worth planning a trip around, is Kalofer, a small town in central Bulgaria, where hundreds of men dance a traditional horo – a Bulgarian chain dance – in the frozen Tundzha River before the cross is thrown. The ritual generally runs from around 7 to 8am, and locals suggest arriving by 6am for a decent view; it’s free, open to the public, and has been running in its current form for close to a century. Bring warm clothes for yourself, not just sympathy for the swimmers – standing on a riverbank at dawn in January is colder than the short walk there suggests.

If you’d rather witness the faith side of the season without freezing, Bulgaria’s monasteries hold some of their most atmospheric services of the year over Christmas and Epiphany, with a fraction of summer’s visitor numbers.

Traditional winter foods

Romanian food

Sarmale sits at the center of the Romanian Christmas table more than any other dish – cabbage leaves wrapped around a mix of minced pork, rice, onion, and dill, then simmered for hours, often with smoked bacon or ribs layered in for extra flavor. Some families make several hundred at once in the days before Christmas, since sarmale reheat well and the dish is meant to last through the holidays rather than get eaten in one sitting.

Mămăligă, a cornmeal porridge similar to polenta, sits alongside as the starchy base most dishes get served with, often finished with a spoonful of sour cream or a slice of telemea cheese.

Cozonac, the sweet braided Christmas bread, is filled with a swirl of ground walnuts, cocoa, and often Turkish delight or raisins. It’s common for cozonac to be baked in batches and given as gifts to godparents and extended family, not just kept for the household’s own table.

Salată de Boeuf rounds out the table: diced boiled potatoes, carrots, and pickles folded through with shredded boiled chicken or beef and mayonnaise, usually finished with a scatter of olives or hard-boiled egg on top – closer to a substantial composed salad than the simple “potato salad” it sometimes gets translated as.

Bulgarian food

Banitsa shows up constantly through the season, not just baked into New Year’s fortunes – a flaky, layered pastry filled with a mix of eggs and sirene (Bulgarian brined white cheese), sometimes with spinach or pumpkin depending on the region and time of year.

Kapama is Bulgaria’s answer to a one-pot Christmas feast: a stew layered in a clay pot with pork, chicken, and sausage, along with sauerkraut, rice, and sometimes a splash of plum brandy, cooked low for hours until everything softens into one dish.

Kozunak, Bulgaria’s sweet Christmas bread, is a rich, braided loaf enriched with eggs, butter, and sugar, studded with raisins and walnuts. The name is close enough to Romania’s cozonac that the two almost certainly share the same root, even though the breads have drifted apart over the centuries – kozunak tends to be plainer and less densely filled than its Romanian cousin.

Sarmi, Bulgaria’s version of cabbage rolls, follows a similar formula to Romanian sarmale – minced meat, rice, and spices wrapped in cabbage leaves – though Bulgarian versions lean more often on a yogurt-based sauce or a dusting of paprika at the table, rather than the sour cream Romanians typically add.

If you want to time a trip around any of this

A rough calendar, since almost everything above only happens on or near a specific date:

• December 5-6: Saint Nicholas Day (Moș Nicolae / Nikulden)
• December 24-25: Christmas Eve and Christmas Day (Colindatul / koleduvane)
• December 27-30: Bear Dance season in Comănești, finale on the 30th
• December 31 – January 1: Sorcova, Capra, and Plugușorul door-to-door visits in Romanian villages; survakane in Bulgaria
• Mid-to-late January: Surva International Festival of Masquerade Games, Pernik
• January 6: Bobotează / Yordanovden, with the river horo dance in Kalofer

None of this is indoor-friendly, so check our guide on what to wear in Romania and Bulgaria in winter before you pack – standing outside for a village procession or a riverside dance at dawn needs different layers than a ski trip does.

A winter visit with Balkan Trails

If you’re building a trip around any of this rather than just reading about it, Maramureș and Bucovina are still where I’d send you first. The wooden churches and painted monasteries there carry more of this calendar intact than the cities do. Pair a few days there with a stop at one of the snow-covered fortresses further south and the trip becomes about more than photographs.

For a trip built around whichever of these dates actually works for you, rather than guessing at what overlaps with your flights, email us at Balkan Trails and we’ll put one together around it.