ROMANIAN CUSTOMS

AND TRADITIONS IN
NEW YEAR
 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.?
 “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.
 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 “bear-
tamer”, 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”.
 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
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