Customs of Turopolje region
Together with chapels and churches many customs are also bound that were performed during church holidays and festivities. Turopolje weddings were very famous with lots of customs like proposals, driving of the equipment, the arrival of the bride to her new home. They were held in the winter, usually on carnival Sunday and lasted for three days, and often more couples married at once. The joy went on various carnival customs with disguise and participants processions and at the end with the burning of the carnival.
After merry carnival period, follies, songs and dance, Ash Wednesday comes, the day when women would bring out all dishes and boil it in “lug” (ash in boiled water) to cleanse it of all fat because the period of Lent occurs, the time of fasting and renunciation. During Lent people did not prepare any ceremonies, the garment was simple and vivid colours of linen were replaced by those of white colours or with yellow motifs.
The last Sunday before Easter is Palm Sunday. Then the young men from each house wore to church for sanctification particularly intertwined branches of cornel or mistletoe that after the blessing they would tuck on the beam of the house. There it would stand a whole year because it was considered as protection against lightning and storms. On Holy Saturday or Easter Sunday people carried food to be blessed, and a round white bread – “svećanica”had a special place. After the consecration of dishes, young married women raced to their houses because the one who arrived first was pisanica – the fastest, the most valuable and the most skillful one.
Until the middle of the last century people didn’t decorate a pine tree on Christmas, but only pine branches, particularly arranged and pendant, usually to ceiling joists above the table - such a decoration was called “kinč”. After decorating the house, the act of "bringing Christmas in the house followed" when the older man with male children went to the barn to bring the straw, and in the house all lights would be turned off. Then they would enter the house with the straw and a candle saying, "May God give us chickens, ducks, calves, foals, pigs, kittens, acorns, peace and God's blessing."