Boboteaza, known as Epiphany or the Feast of St. John in English, is celebrated on January 7th in Romania. It’s also the name day for anyone named Ion, Ionut, Ioana, Ionel, and Nelu (a derivative of Ion). If you want, the priest will come to your house on this day to give you a blessing.
It’s my fiance’s name day and to celebrate, I bought him a bottle of Jack Daniels. Because Jack is a nickname for John 😛
One of my favorite traditions for this holiday includes the priest throwing a cross into a river and a group of enthusiastic young men jump in and swim after it.
This year, the guys got really lucky because we are having “spring” temperatures (about 40-50 degrees F – I guess the east coast US stole all of our winter). Last year was much colder, so I present to you a video of these brave gentleman from 2017 jumping into an almost frozen river while it’s snowing:
Keeping up with the Carpathians 
What happened, why is he bleeding? Did he get hit with the second cross?
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I think he got elbowed in the face? It’s a competition, so they’re pretty aggressive.
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