Pentecost

Rusalii is Romania’s name for Pentecost, the Christian feast recalling the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles. It arrives fifty days after Easter and brings the long spring liturgical season toward its close.

The Labour Code lists the first and second days of Pentecost as nationwide non-working holidays. Alongside church worship, the season carries older local customs connected with greenery, protection and the threshold into summer. Those customs are regional rather than uniform, which is part of the feast’s enduring texture.

Pentecost is Rusalii in Romanian and falls fifty days when Easter Sunday is counted as the first day, or forty-nine days after it in date arithmetic. Orthodox worship remembers the descent of the Holy Spirit and includes the kneeling prayers at Vespers. Folklore gives the season another vocabulary: rusalii can also name potentially dangerous female spirits, and protective greenery or ritual performance appears in regional tradition. The Căluș dance, especially associated with southern Romania, historically belongs to the Pentecost period and was inscribed by UNESCO as intangible heritage. Article 139 protects both Sunday and Monday; the calendar shows the Orthodox date, while a Christian employee’s legal dates follow their recognised denomination.