December 16, 2003
Christmas traditions
Romanian Christmas traditions are surprisingly similar to those in Germany, actually. Advent wreaths, presents on Christmas Eve, the decorating... all seems very home-y to me. There are two traditions which we don't have, though: the pig and the carollers.
First, the pig. It's traditional to slaughter a pig for Christmas. Our maid told us of the 170-kilo pig they slaughtered in her home village near Bucharest last week and this morning, I saw two men carrying a dead pig into one of our neighbor's house. The pig of our maid was so fat, it couldn't walk the last couple months of its life. What a fate.
In any case, the pigs are slaughtered and butchered and turned into ham, bacon and sausages. It's dubbed a rural tradition but with all the pigs I've seen lately, I think it's a true Romanian Christmas thing.
The other tradition are the colindatori (carollers). Groups of people -- mostly men in my limited experience -- go from house to house in the Christmas season and sing Christmas carols. And boy, do they sing beautifully. For some days now, they've either come to our door or to the neighbors, so we always get to hear the carollers sing in the evening. It's incredibly wonderful. Here's a site where you can listen to the instrumentals of those carols -- now imagine this sung a capella by good male singers. Hmm. Nice.
Yes, you're supposed to pay them. But I think it's nice enough even with that mundane aspect.
Posted by claudia at December 16, 2003 02:49 PMActually, as far as I know, the tradition does not say to pay them but to offer them apples, wallnuts and sweeks.
Of course, when I was a child I was very happy to sing carols to some of my neighbours because after that I would have more pocket money :)
Have you heard yet of "sorcova"? it is the first carrol in the New Year. We use to wake up my neighbour to sing this to him :)
Have fun!
Anca & Misha
PS: I am starting to work on this website: http://www.list.ro/scrima
(scrima means fencing)
I intend to publish lots of photos from Romania, bucharest and from the fencing contests.