Mysterious Romania (XVII) Name Day

There’s a tradition in Romania that, I’m almost certain, is unique.

While people living in other countries celebrate  only their birthday, Romanians can have a second celebration – the name day.

It is valid for people who were given the name of a saint: Maria (Mary), Ion ( John), Vasile(Basil), Petre (Peter), Gheorghe(George), Andrei(Andrew) and so on.

Each saint has his or her day in the calendar, so on that date the people with a saint name have a party.

While for birthdays you have to be invited to go to that person’s house, on the name day everyone who wants to congratulate the celebrated person can come. There are no invitations. Usually people bring flowers and candy-boxes to women and  flowers and drink bottles to men. ( You may imagine how happy are florists around here).

 

On 26th October, tomorrow, there’s a great festivity as there’s St Dumitru’s day( Demeter). All women and men called Dumitra, Dumitru, Dumitrita celebrate and receive gifts from family and friends.

 Folk tradition says that, on this day, warmth goes inside the earth and cold comes out. St Dumitru takes the leaves out of the trees and makes the flowers go dry.  On this day the doors are unlocked and winter is released on earth. 

Fire has a great symbolism now. Fire is a pastoral divinity protecting the shepherds and purifying the sheep.

On St Dumitru’s Eve people start a night  ceremonial fire called Samedru’s fire.

Children jump over the fire, when the flames aren’t high, to be healthy all along the year. The old people of the village throw a piece of cinder from that fire in the garden to give it the power to bear fruit again the next spring.

This ceremony is century old and has a preChristian origin. In ancient times people started the fires to allow the spirits of the dead, coming on earth, to get warm.  

On St Dumitru’s Eve, shepherds lay a sheepskin down, among the sheep. If a black sheep comes and sits on it the winter will be mild, if a white sheep comes and sits on it the winter will be a harsh one.

Women must share dry fruits, nuts and apples to the children and a special service is held in churches.

 Wishing all who celebrate their name day tomorrow – my husband included -  a long healthy life, full of joy!

And here’s the traditional Romanian wish -  

                     Sa traiesti cu numele!

Guest Promo (CXI) Paranormal Romance Thursday

I’m thrilled to have the fabulous, Margo Bond Collins, here on Paranormal Romance Thursday. I’m featuring her latest release, 

                                  Sanguinary

                   a beautiful paranormal romance.

Blurb:

Detective Cami Davis and her sexy, cowboy-turned-vampire informant are all that’s standing between humanity and monsters who would rule the world—and all that’s standing between them having a torrid love affair is the fact that he’s an enemy of humanity.

THROUGH DARKEST TEMPTATION

When Dallas police detective Cami Davis joined the city’s vampire unit, she planned to use the job as a stepping-stone to a better position in the department. She didn’t know then what she knows now: A silent war rages between humans and their supposedly pacified predators, and the vampires are winning. With the clock running out on her kind, Cami will do whatever she must to defeat the “Sanguinary.”

Enter Reese Fulton, a disaffected ex-cop and a vampire. She can’t exactly trust him, but with his cowboy boots and good-ole-boy drawl he’s the perfect beard for Cami’s fledgling undercover operation. Yet playing Reese’s Claimed—a vampire’s personal bloodgiver—isn’t as straightforward as she was led to believe. His bite is as enthralling as his dimpled smile, and soon Cami is wondering which will pose more of a challenge: subduing the enemies of humanity...or her own desire.

Buy Links:Boroughspublishinggroup

                            Amazon

                            Barnesandnoble

                           Allromanceebooks

                           Createspace

Excerpt

“Hey, Bradley.” I beckoned the crime-scene tech, who had finally arrived and was snapping on gloves. “Is that a piece of paper under the vic’s head?”

He bent down over my shoulder to get a clearer view from my line of sight. “It’s tangled in her hair.” He pulled a pair of long tweezers out of his kit and snagged the sliver. “Yep. There’s a word written on it.” We both peered at the brownish, spidery writing.

“Sanguinary,” I said. “Is that written in blood?”

“Maybe. I’ll get the lab to run a basic analysis on it. If it’s blood, we’ll be able to let you know pretty quick if it’s human and, if so, what type. DNA will take longer.”

I stared at the woman a little longer. Her dark hair—almost the same color as mine—spilled out around her, matted with dark, coagulating blood. The two bloody marks on her neck shone like black stars on a white background.

Vampire.

I knew that if I lifted her dress, there would be other puncture wounds all over her body, and strange symbols carved across her skin: pentagrams within circles and other ritualistic signs. Exactly like the others. Ten murders in the four weeks since the beginning of September—all centered in downtown Dallas, and many of affluent victims whose families demanded action.

The department had been in a barely suppressed uproar.

I stood up, my knees popping a little. Five years ago, they wouldn’t have done that.

And five years before that? Vampires hadn’t existed, except in books and B movies.

It took time for the world to believe. We hadn’t even realized how to fight back when they’d first shown up.

This victim’s ragged, bloody fingernails suggested she had tried to resist but obviously failed.

The red dress she wore would have originally matched the color of the relatively scant splashes of blood surrounding her, but those stains had dried to a muddy brown, the same color as the writing on the paper caught in her hair.

Her clothing suggested she’d been at the opera that evening, though the manager, roused from her bed, swore that the building had been cleared and empty when she left.

One black, high-heeled pump lay several feet away, toppled over onto its side, the heel broken, as if she had stumbled out of the shoe when it failed her as she ran from a pursuer.

Sanguinary.

This was the third time the word had shown up in the case. The first time it had been left in a victim’s voicemail by a man calling from an untraceable burner phone: “The Sanguinary expects you at the Blood House tomorrow night.”

The second time, it had been part of a to-do list in a victim’s day planner: Meet with vampire admin. + Sanguinary.

I’d heard the word even before that from vampires I had taken down—whispered as a threat, shouted as a warning: The Sanguinary is coming. The Sanguinary will kill you all.

But no one who knew what the Sanguinary was would admit to it.

That’s why I was about to go undercover among the vampires.

Find more about Margo here:http://www.MargoBondCollins.com