14/03/2025
Every year on March 14th, Albania 🇦🇱 celebrates "Spring Day" (Dita e Verës), a beautiful pagan festival similar to Ostara. It has always been my favorite celebration since childhood because it begins the night before, on March 13th, when villages light big bonfires. Everyone jumps across the fire to leave winter behind and "cleanse" themselves for summer.
That same night, my mom and grandma would prepare red-dyed eggs and trays filled with homemade cookies, dried fruits, especially figs (Pala Fiku), and lots and lots of nuts. Of course, the centerpiece of the feast is Ballokume, a special cookie from Elbasan, my birthplace. Made only for this celebration, Ballokume is a rich, buttery corn flour treat that everyone looks forward to.
On the morning of the 14th, my mom would bring a blossoming branch of cherry, plum, or apple into the house. We would rinse our faces with water from the boiled white eggs and dry them with a red towel. Then, we’d make a special bracelet called verore, usually braided with red and white string, sometimes with green as well. While tying it on our left wrist, we have to make a wish. The verore stays on until we see the first sparrow, at which point we take it off and hang it on a pomegranate tree.
Now, back to the best part, the big tray of food! Children from the neighborhood would gather with plastic bags or small containers and go house to house, collecting treats. Later in the afternoon, we’d have a picnic, sharing and enjoying everything we had gathered.
My stash usually lasted about four days. But in 2002, I planted one of the nuts I had collected that day in our backyard. In 2022, we celebrated 20 years of the Bora Nuts Tree, but that's a story for another time.
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