The customs of St. Laser's and Palm Day are the woman's correspondence of the man's customs on Christmas and New Year's Day. Grown up girls at the age of 10-16 years, dressed in festal clothes and with wreathes of flowers on their heads, take part in them. The lassies carry small baskets, adorned with green branches, for gathering gifts.
      The group of girls enters each house and sings a special song-wishing health, fertility and happy life to each member of the family. The householders present them with eggs, nuts and coins. The girls called "lazarki" perform an open ring-dance and songs of love character on that day.
      When the lassies finish their going round the houses, they divide the collected gifts among them and sit down to a common table in the house of their leader.
      The whole ritual is of initiating character to the participants. From that day they enter the group of the young unmarried girls and are considered fit for marriage and settling down. Old people say that if a girl has not participated in the custom "lazaruvane", she cannot get married.
      The ritual going round the houses and gardens is of verbal magic's character, aimed at providing health and fertility.
      The next day-Palm Sunday is a continuation of St. Laser's Day. The girls, who had taken part in the custom the previous day, gather together by the river and each of them carry a wreath of willow twigs with a sign on it. The wreaths are arranged on a board and let go downstream. The girl, whose wreath comes out first, will marry first of her girlfriends during the year and she becomes a "kumitsa"(leader) to the rest of the girls. All the girls observe silence in the presence of the "kumitsa" till Easter.

      Springtime holidays St. Laser's Day and Palm Sunday are among the most poetical and beautiful girls' holidays, dedicated to the flowers, love and fertility. They are a part of the Easter ritual cycle devoted to the renewal of nature and resurrection of life.
      By tradition students from Gabrovo will present springtime girls' customs at the ethnographic open-air museum "ETAR" on St. Laser's Day (Saturday, in 11:30 a.m.)