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| NEW YEAR'S EVE TRADITIONS IN ROMANIA |
| (2008-01-01) |
| Last updated: 2008-01-03 15:40 EET |
These celebrations are richer in meaning for the people living in the countryside, for which Christmas and the New Year’s Eve are accompanied by spectacular traditions. But it’s not just the countryside that dresses up for celebration. The towns and cities across Romania are celebrating too. The streets of the town of Bacau in eastern Romania, for instance, resound with the carols and music and dance of the folk ensembles from Botosani, way up north and from Hunedoara in south-western Romania. The director of the Busuiocul Folk Ensemble in Bacau, Petre Vlase talks about the end of the year traditions in Moldavia:
“The villages of Moldavia have preserved no less than 100 winter holidays traditions, which fall in the dances with masks category. There is the dance of the she-goat, the dance of the stag, the horse and the bear. These animals are surrounded by a host of other secondary characters in these mini plays that are enacted around Christmas and the New Year’s Eve. These secondary characters are symbolical, often satirical representations of professions in the country side.”
In the northern Romanian region of Bucovina, the New Year’s Eve is opened by children spreading the news of the coming of a new year from door to door, using a bell and chanting new year wishes. Then there is a special poem the kids say on New Year Day, called Plugusorul, which would translate as the Little Plough. It’s a poem fraught with fertility and rejuvenation symbolism. The kids crack the whips, ring the bells and use a small barrel covered by animal skin, through which they pull a tuft of hair, producing thus a low sound imitating the roar of a bull. This instrument is called a Buhai. Vera Romaniuc is an ethnologist living and working in Gura Humorului in Moldavia, north–eastern Romania. She knows more about the New Year’s traditions:
“The buhai is the instrument used by groups of kids who go from door to door, wishing people a Happy New Year and reciting this poem called The Little Plough. This buhai is a sort of barrel. At one end it is bottomless. At the other it is covered with animal skin. This skin has a whole through which horse hair is pulled by one person while a second one holds this barrel under the arm. The movement of the horse hair through this hole in the skin produces a low sound resembling the roar of a bull. Another character in the group is the one who rings the cow bell and yet another one cracks a huge whip. And of course there is a fourth person who says the poem and makes the wishes.”
As the New Year’s Eve advances, new groups of wassailers turn up on the streets, those who say the farmers “Little Plough” and then the groups of masked people, the bear, the she-goat and sometimes the horse. A special thing characteristic of the New Year’s Eve traditions in Humor in north-eastern Romania is the straw bear, about which we find out more from Vera Romanciuc:
“There are several key moments during these little plays. There is the arrival, the climbing on a stick and perhaps the most important moment is the death of the bear. During the dance, the bear dies, only to resurrect after one of the characters utters a magic incantation. The death and resurrection of the bear is a metaphor for the continuous cycle of seasons during the year. At the end of the dance, the bears’ mask and clothes are burnt. The bear is played by a lad clothed with straws. The bear has to move very slowly. It’s a tough role to play and the tradition is almost extinct.”
In other parts of Romania, the New Year is an opportunity to perform magic rituals like fortune telling, establishing the calendar and solving conflicts. Ethnologist Ioan Prahoveanu helps us find out more about this:
“In the southern region of Bran, the Little Plough and the Sorcova are more common than in Transylvania. In Bran, the New Year traditions include divinatory rituals like the onion calendar and the Sanvlasii. The onion calendar consists of the following practice: take salt and spread it on 12 onion layers. If the salt turns into liquid in any of the 12 onion layers it means that that particular month will be rainy. Sanvlasiile is simply a hat with a number of tickets inside. Each ticket is a forecast for next year for instance, someone is getting married, there will be a good crop, there’ll be famine, natural disasters. These traditions and rituals bring the community together”.
In conclusion, the New Year’s Eve is the threshold between two years and it is a special time. The food on the table is very important and it takes a lot of preparation. According to Romanian traditions, meat is a must on every table. And they also say it is wrong to eat chicken on New Year’s Eve because hens are birds that scrap the earth and throw everything in the back with their claws and thus driving luck away. Instead it is good to have pork on the table. Pigs scrub the earth with their snout always in front. The dinner will definitely be rich in wine and palinca or tuica, and many traditional dishes like, sarmale (minced meat in cabbage rolls), sausages, cookies and all sorts of goodies, because it is believed that if the New Year dinner is rich, so will the next year.
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