Winter traditions and customs in Bucovina >> The Christmas Eve As date preceding a great calendar event (The Savior’s Birth), a few years ago, the Christmas Eve had a multitude of customs and traditions full of symbols, most of them being removed from the ancient rituals, but some of them still being alive today. Since Christmas Eve, the houses were well arranged, cleaned and decorated with the most beautiful and valuable decorative fabrics. On the morning of Christmas Eve, after the householder got out for the first time, on his way back, he brought small slivers for all his family members, wishing them all the best for wealth and health in family. The housewife used to go out and throw cereal seeds towards the east in order for the wild birds not to harm the spring sowing. The head of the family used to touch with his hands all the tools in the household in order to have gains and good luck in the spring agrarian works or those during the year. Therewith, the householder took care to receive back all the things lent to his neighbors, especially the tools, because they thought it was bad luck not to keep it in their households during the winter holidays. The men used to enter the orchards, and threaten with their choppers the barren trees in that year, simulating chopping and the women, with their hands full of leaven begged them not to touch the trees, while they touched its stems with the product on their hands, thus practicing a fertility ritual, hoping for a better harvest next year. Also on the morning of Christmas Eve, the old men started to “meditate” near the fireplaces, while the women prepared the ritual dishes, such as the knot-shaped breads “as the sun and the moon”, as well as other dishes to be consumed the following days. Early in the morning, the women practiced defense, impregnation and fertility rituals. They hid the forks, the skewers and the spinning flaxes or put a rock in the bread oven until the Epiphany Day, hoping to avert the snakes from the households. The garbage in that day was collected in a corner and then thrown in the garden as fertilizer or burnt on the third day of Christmas, when the cattle were also smoked. Only the unmarried young women, after sweeping the house backwards (from the door to the window), were allowed to take the garbage out in that day towards a road junction, with their hair undone and praying aloud. On Christmas Eve, the chimneys were swept, the collected soot being spread through the orchards as fertilizers and the water resulted from the dishwashing was collected in a container and was kept until spring, when the beehives were splashed with it in order not to be hexed and not to have its manna stolen. On the Christmas Eve, they also made a big knot-shaped bread, as figure 8, called “Creciun”, that was kept until the next year, when the plows were pulled off and put on its horns. The most important time of that day was to prepare and decorate the feast, called the Christmas Eve Feast, comprising 12 dishes. On the best tablecloth in the house, they used to put the knot-shaped bread (one in each corner), the knot-shaped bread symbolizing the sun and the face of Jesus, also symbolizing the four cardinal points, meaning that the Savior watches the hole world and in the middle of the table they used to put a bottle of red wine. They also used to put other Fast dishes in clay bowls: boiled edible boletus (a traditional mushroom), peas soup, fish soup, dried or smoked fruit, crushed wheat, boiled and sweetened with honey, also heaving nut kernel, minced maize rolls wrapped in grape leaves, a special dish called “Jesus’ cakes” (a thin and round unleavened cake, sweetened with honey, heaving also nut kernel), etc. On Christmas Eve Feast were also laid: garlic in corners, a scythe and under it a hatchet, metallic objects symbolizing the transfer of the iron’s health and hardness to the human, and the garlic and the poppy being used over an year for evil eye prevention. Nobody was allowed to touch the dishes on the table until the arrival of the priest with the sacred image, who after entering the house praised the Nativity hymn, blessed the house, the family and the dishes, then was invited to sit on the bench or on the bed in order for “the hens to sit on the eggs and the young women to have suitors”. Except for Fast products, on this holiday were also prepared special meat dishes based on pork, animal sacrificed especially on the Eve of Christmas (sausages, traditional sausages, steak, minced meat rolls wrapped in grape leaves, etc.) in order for the human, by getting dressed with the holy clothes, to live fully the divine moment. Another time of the day is decorating the Christmas tree, a symbol of durability, a shaft of anchoring the human in the cosmos and of the universal mystery. According to Romanian tradition, Santa Clause was the old men in whose household Jesus was born, basically a popular local deity who (in the Carpathian mythological concept) died and revived on the Eve of winter solstice. The green Christmas tree is a substitute for this character, a variant of the burnt log, on the night of this holiday and which symbolized the incinerated deity. The Christmas tree decorated today with ornaments, tinsel, candies and lights, as well as waiting for Santa, who comes with gifts represent a western custom coming from the Germans, spreading from the cities to the villages, from the boyars’ courts to the peasants’ houses. These customs came earlier to Bukovina, due to the fact that this land was occupied by Austrians since 1775. Besides these rituals, early in the morning of Christmas Eve, the children begin to wander around singing carols, followed by older children during the day, and by the young at night. Caroling belongs to the customs dedicated to revival of nature and vegetation, where we can find gifts as knot-shaped bread and fruit, as solar and vegetable symbols meant to assure wealth in the household, today being replaced with money or candies, the traditional gifts being less used. Information and texts from: Mihai Camilar, Raboj si pecete magica. Un calendar popular bucovinean, Directorate for Culture, Cults and Cultural National Patrimony Suceava and the Museum of Folk Customs from Bucovina-Gura Humorului, Suceava, 2009. source: cjsuceava.ro
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 20:17:22 +0000
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