site.btaUPDATED Orthodox Christians Celebrate Palm Sunday on April 28

In 2024 Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrate Palm Sunday on April 28. Observed on the last Sunday of Lent, the feast commemorates the triumphal entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem, where He was welcomed with olive and laurel branches. Just five days after they greeted Him with "Hosanna", the same crowd cried "Crucify Him!"
 
The holiday is called Tsvetnitsa in Bulgarian (literally, "Flowers Day"). The 343,000-plus Bulgarians named for flowers and trees celebrate their name day on Palm Sunday.

Solemn liturgies were held countrywide on the occasion of the feast. Churches are bedecked with willow twigs, geraniums and other spring flowers. As palms are rare in Bulgaria because of its moderate climate, willow twigs are blessed at the churches on Palm Sunday and are distributed to worshipers, who take them home and keep them in their icon corner. Hence the other name of the feast, Vrabnitsa ("Willows Day").

At Sofia' St Alexander Nevsky Patriarchal Cathedral, the solemn liturgy on the festive occasion was celebrated by Metropolitan Gregory of Vratsa, Locum Tenens of the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, the Bulgarian Patriarchate said in a press release.

The co-celebrants included Bishop Gerasim of Melnik, who is Secretary General of the Holy Synod, and Bishop Polycarp of Belogradchik, who is Vicar to the Metropolitan of Sofia. 

Curiously, the name of the feast has given rise to a somewhat rude colloquial expression in Bulgarian: "na Varba v sryada" or "na Varba v petak", which translates as "on Willows Day on Wednesday" or "on Willows Day on Wednesday", meaning "never", because the feast is always celebrated on a Sunday.

Just as curiously, Palm Sunday is the subject of a Bulgarian commemorative coin that was put into circulation on March 24, 2004 (Palm Sunday then fell on April 4). The hand-painted copper and nickel coin with a face value of BGN 5 was produced in a mintage of 10,000.