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Romanian Christmas Romanian Christmas
With Romanians, the winter feasts are full cry from 24 December to 7 January. There central events occur during the Christmas Day, New Year and Epiphany, with their respective events. The most important feature of these feasts is their incomparably reach repertoire of customs, traditions, and believes, of artistic, literary, musical, choreographic and other folklore events, which make the winter holidays to be some of the most original and spectacular spiritual manifestations of the Romanian people. Children and lads go from house to house singing Christmas carols, or through the streets on New Year's Eve reciting congratulatory verse. The whole traditional village participates in waists, although this custom is practiced by children mostly. They are organised in troops, according to a well-ordered hierarchy, each with its own chosen leader and established meeting place. This is a the dominating structure in village life during the Christmas-tide festivals. Another custom practised by children individually on New Year's Day is a “Sorcova”.
Sorcova An augural custom from the cycle of events devoted to the celebration of the New Year. The ritual is performed by a little boy carrying the ‘sorcova’, which is a small branch or stick adorned with paper flowers with which he touches his elders, addressing wishes and invoking health, abundance, and prosperity. This is a small branch or stick adorned with differently coloured artificial flowers, cooled sorcova with which they touch rhythmically their elders lightly, while congratulating them on the occasion and wishing them a long life to a hoary age and a Happy New Year in a specific recitative of forty words, corresponding to the forty touches with the sorcova (from Slav. soroku = forty), which runs somewhat as follows: "Sorcova”“ The Merry sorcovaLong may you live,Long may you flourish,Like apple trees, Like pear trees, In midsummer, Like the rich autumnOverflowing with abundance,Hard as steelFast as an arrow,For many years to come!Happy New Year!”
A similar custom is practised by the children of Hunedoara (in Transylvania) on Christmas Eve, when they go from house to house with a nicely printed headkerchief tied to a lance, locally called pizãrã, (whence the name of the groups of children: pizãrãi) which represents a kind of sorcova reciting: “As many lumps of coal in the hearth,Just as many suitors to the lass;As many stones in the river,Just a many wheat stacks in the field;As a many chips from the cutter,Just a many children around the hearth!”.
The Star Another interesting and decorous custom is the Star (Steaua). This is a large star made of coloured glossy paper, lighted inside like a lantern, which school children, in a groups of three carry. In the evening of Christmas-tide from house to house, singing a star-recitative celebrating “Christ's birth”:“The Star is rising high,Like a hidden mystery,The Star shines brightly,And to the world announces,That today the pure,The immaculate Virgin Mary,Gives birth to Messiah,In that famous city,Known by the name of Bethlehem”. The traditional gifts which children expect to receive include fruit, nuts, pastries, and knot-shaped bread, which is itself a symbol of abundance and rich harvests. It is also customary to give them small sums of money in coin.
Children little plough This ancient agrarian custom is an augural manifestation occasioned by the passage from the old to the new year. on New Year’s Eve, groups of children go from house to house, expressing the compliments of the season, while ringing bells, cracking a long whip, and reciting verse: “The year tomorrow will be renewed, On its way our little plough will start, Good Wishes to you to impart, Which will come true, if by you received. The winter is heavy, the snow id high, Which is of good omen for the coming year, Announcing that a rich harvest is near By driving deep the plough if you try”.
The “Capra”(goat) dance With the Romanians, the goat was believed to be the animal that could show if the weather was to be fine or fou . Most certainly at first the "capra" dance (the kiling, the mourning, the burial, the resurection) was a solemn ceremony, a part of the cult. As part of the agrarian festivities the dance has become a ritual designed to bring fertility in the coming year, an increase in the number of animals in the shepherds’ flocks, bumper crops - invoked and evoked by the grains flung by the host over the procession of the „capra". The "capra" dance, generalized all over the country by the end of the 19th century and considered a pagan dance, a lot of members of the clergy refused to receive the procession in their houses, considering it „forbidden by the Christian religion". (Gr.Tocilescu) Nowadays the dance is only a pretext for one of the traditional artistic events, an opportunity for displaying beautiful ornaments, carpets, towels, and so on, all in bright colours, at times rather loud, to cheer up the householders and to express best wishes on the occasion of the New Year.
In the villages and townships of Maramures - two distint types of this dance are performed: The "capra" dance - based only on a musical accompaniament (at Ieud, only one piper; at Botiza, four or six pipers) the "capra" dance included in a complex folk show. The same as in the other dances with masks performed during the winter holidays, in the "capra" dance, besides the classical masks, the goat, the shepherd, the gipsy, the woodman masks of „devils" and of „greybeards" were introduced, where yells, lusty cheers, funny gestures, intensified the cheerful, humorous aspect, at times lending it a nuance of grotesque.
