Romanian Winter Season Traditions In Romania, the winter holiday season is truly in full-swing from December 24 to January 7.

Highlights include: Christmas Day, New Year and Epiphany, with their respective eves. The most important feature of these celebrations is their unique variety of colorful Romanian customs, traditions, and believes, of artistic, literary, musical, and other folklore events, which make the winter holidays some of the most original and spectacular spiritual manifestations of the Romanian people. Children of all ages 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 mostly children practice this custom. The Caroling During the first hours after dark on Christmas' Eve is the time for children to go caroling and the adults stay home to greet them. As they go caroling from house to house, the children receive treats like candy, fruit, baked treats and sometimes even money in appreciation of their performance and as a sign of holiday good will. The grown-ups caroling goes on Christmas evening and night. When the performance is over, the host invites the carolers inside the house for food, drinks and presents. The Star Carol Children make a star using colored paper and then they put in its middle an icon of Jesus. Many of children decorate their star using shiny tinsel. The Star Carol is a tradition during the 3 days of Romanian Christmas.

The Goat Tradition Throughout the season, teenagers and young adults especially enjoy caroling with the Goat. The Goat is actually a usually boisterous young person dressed up in a goat costume. The whole group dances through the streets and from door to door, often with flute music. This tradition comes from the ancient Roman people and it reminds us of the celebration of the ancient Greek gods. This custom is also called "brezaia" in Wallachia and Oltenia, because of the multicolored appearance of the goat mask. The goat jumps, jerks, turns round, and bends, clattering regularly the wooden jaws.

Bear Custom This custom is known only in Moldavia, a part of Romania, on the Christmas Eve. In this case a young person dresses up in a bear costume adorned with red tassels on its ears, on his head and shoulders. The person wearing the bear costume is accompanied by fiddlers and followed by a whole procession of characters, among them a child dressed-up as the bear's cub.

The Little Plough

Plugusorul is a small plough. In Romanian folklore is a traditional procession with a decorated plough, on New Years' Eve. This is a well wishing custom for the field fruitfulness into the new year. This custom arises from "Carmen arvale", a Roman wish for bountiful crops. The ploughmen are teenagers and children carrying whips, bells and pipes in their hands.

Sorcova "Sorcova" is a special bouquet used for New Year's wishes early New Years morning. Children wish people a Happy New Year! while touching them lightly with this bouquet. After they have wished a Happy New Year to the members of their family, the children go to the neighbors and relatives. Traditionally, the "Sorcova" bouquet was made up of one or several fruit - tree twigs (apple-tree, pear-tree, cherry-tree, plum-tree); all of them are put into water, in warm place, on November 30th (St. Andrews Day), in order to bud and to blossom on New Year's Eve. Nowadays people often use an apple-tree or pear-tree twig decorated with flowers made up of colored paper. The children receive all kinds of treats such as: cakes, honeycombs, biscuits, pretzels, candies, nuts, money.

Traditional Christmas food

piftie - pork and beef based aspic, with pork meat, vegetables and garlic crnai - pork-based sausages tob - various cuttings of pork, liver boiled, diced and "packed" in pork stomach like a salami sarmale - rolls of cabbage pickled in brine and filled with meat and rice cozonac, sort of Romanian equivalent of panettone Strong spirits: o palinka o rachiu o uic

Here, in Moldavia, women have to make a sweet dish, like a dessert. Its called turte and it consists of several layers of very thin sheet pies soaked in a sauce of water, sugar and rum. Between each sheet of soaked pie you have to put nuts and sugar. In the end it will look like a cake and its really tasty