Romanian Customs And Traditions In New Year

ROMANIAN CUSTOMS AND TRADITIONS IN NEW YEAR

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New Year's Eve is accompanied everywhere by old customs and superstitions. Some do not take into account, others just pretend. The fact is that many of them are common to several people and they are just very long time, from the ancient Celts, the Romanian and the Korean and Chinese. To ensure that New Year will bring, however, comply with sfiinţenie Romanians but all traditions and superstition about New Year.?

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“Plugusorul” The “Plugusorul” is one of the major Romanian traditions, practiced up to this moment with the constant faith that the wishes made by younger (or older) carol singers will be fulfilled and that the families thus visited will have rich crops in the year that is about to start. It seems that this tradition has appeared in ancient Rome. “Plugusorul” is performed during two subsequent days On December 31, children and youngsters visit each house with a small plough and whips, which they crack at the order of the leader, and the most skilled of them is offered the opportunity to wish the hosts health and fortune, with special verses. The tradition is continued on January 1, when a group of young men carry a real plough from yard to yard simulating tilth.

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The Bear Moldova also preserves the tradition of the bear. A young man disguises himself as the bear, wearing the fur of a killed animal, decorated with red fringes. The “bear” is pompously led on all the streets of the village and accompanied by a “beartamer”, by the musicians who join him with whistles and by carol singers with sticks in their hands. The bear will grumble and struggle, acting like a real bear. In the meantime, he is watched by the carol performers and the audience and, at the end, the audience rewards the “actors”.

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The Goat

It is another tradition closely connected to the “Vicleim”. Since Saint-Ignace until Christmas (in some regions, until Saint Basil), there is he traditions that boys go from house to house with the Goat. Beside the classical masks (the Goat, the Shepherd, the Gipsy, the Woodchopper) there are Satanic characters (devils, old men and old women, clowns and silly characters) which are meant to stir laughter by their fumy yells and moves, transforming the ritual in an amusing and simultaneously grotesque performance. At the beginning, the Goat’s Game (the killing, the mourning, the burial, the rise from the death) were parts of a pagan ceremony. The goat is made of sculpted wood and it is followed by a numerous group, that also accompanies its staccato dance. Usually, its sudden movements, its rhythmical sounds, its rotations and bows are meant to induce fear to the hosts. The most impressive are the groups of 9, 11 or 13 goats, forming an ensemble. They do not clack monotonously, in unison and in staccato, to impress listeners, but they are matched on different

AUTOR- PRICOP MIHAITA  BIBLIOGRAFIE: http://www.nineoclock.ro/index.php? page=detalii&categorie=supliment&id=173 2 