Over 200 people receive March trinkets on behalf of employees of Chisinau-based museum

Chisinau, 1 March /MOLDPRES/ - Employees of the National Ethnography and Natural History Museum organized a novel action today. On this say, they donated Martisors (March trinkets) to more than 200 people in the Stefan cel Mare public garden from Chisinau.  

Contacted by MOLDPRES, the director of the museum, Petru Vicol, said that this was a nice initiative to give Martisors, which symbolize the coming of spring, to passers-by in the Public Garden on this day.    

”We also thought about promoting this Martisor, which in December 2017 was recorded in UNESCO’s representatives list of the intangible cultural heritage. Our museum is the most suitable institution to promote this element of the national heritage. We tied Martisors to the hand. According to the tradition, they are tied either to hand, or to neck, so that people are protected from evil. Passers-by remained surprised and learned more about this element of the culture of the Romanian space,” Petru Vicol also said.   

For his part, researcher Andrei Prohin said that Martisor signified the switch from the cold season to the warm one and the succession of day and night through the two colours – white and red. “Some ethnographers suppose that, in the past, the Martisor had been made of the white and black colours. In some settlements, the Martisor has three colours – white, red and green. Also, the colours yellow and blue are met in some regions of the Balkan Peninsula.” Andrei Prohin noted.     

Also today, the team of the Ion Creanga National Library for Children, along with pupils of the gymnasium No 7 from Moldova’s capital, carried out an action titled, A Martisor in exchange of a smile, at the Emilian Cotaga Republican Hospital for Children. They donated more than 150 Martisors and books to children put in this hospital. The Martisors were made or bought by children, parents, librarians, teachers.