Today is Todorovden, also called Horse Easter. As is the tradition, on this day horses are fed, after which horse races are organized. What is known as Todorov bread is baked, adorned with the figure of a stylized horseshoe and horse head.

• Todorovden combines pagan beliefs and Orthodox canon
• Horse races on Todorovden – an undying tradition

In iconography and in the folk calendar, St. Theodore Tyrone is depicted as a dragon-slayer on horseback, a symbol of victory against paganism. “There is a connection with the proto-Bulgarian ethnic element in the formation of a unified Bulgarian identity. Proto-Bulgarians were a horse-riding, warring people, hence the connection between Todorovden and the horse – a celestial intermediary between the lower and the higher realm,” says Iliya Valev from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies.