CHRISTMAS IN RUMANIA

New Zealand Times, Volume LI, Issue 12022, 27 December 1924, Page 13

CHRISTMAS IN RUMANIA

(By

Ileana Potresca.)

Every Rumanian household eats “Turte” on Christmas Eve. Wafer thin dough cake* baked in the oven and covered with fine melted sugar, honey, and pounded walnuts. The same dish appears again on Epiphany Eve, for the “Turte” represent the swaddling clothes of Christ. ROAST PORK. Rich and poor alike eat roast pork for Christmas dinner, and if you go into any Rumanian village, snow covered at this season, you may see tfie blue smoke rising from the courtyards as the fat porker—which until that fatal day lias led a pampered existence in a special sty—turns on the spit. The joints, hams, and bacons are carried info the lofts to be smoked, but there is always a substantial portion for the Christmas dinner-table, on which appears also the national dish of Mamaliga—a golden smoking slab of maize porridge. Millet cakes Stuffed with pork fry and grilled in the fat till they are brown and crisp make Christmas dainty, and there is a pleasing hospitality abroad in the villages which ensures a share of the feast for all—not forgetting the gipsies who throng on the outskirts of the hamlets. THE PROCESSION. On Christmas morning the priest walks from house to house, followed by an acolyte carrying a dish of holy water. The priest carries a whisk made of sweet basil sprigs—a plant which appears to have some special religious significance in all the Balkan countries —and, dipping this whisk into the holy water, he sprinkles the four corners of the room in every house, receiving in return some money for the Church and a lump of hemp for spinning. He is expected to Bit down __and eat and drink something in every house: small wonder that the expression “the priest’s stomach” has passed into a proverb in Rumania! There are Christmas waits in Rumania as in England, but in place of carols the singers select verses from a set of more than two hundred traditional rhymes, some dealing with the birth of Christ, hut many others relating to historical events or merely legends of the country. The refrain, which is common to all, ,is rather charming in the musical language of the country. Translated Into English, it runs as: “This is a wondrous night, 0 White Flowers, Great Christmas night,” SCHOOLBOYS A NO THE STAR, Rumanian schoolboys revel in the carrying of the star—a huge wooden star borne on a long pole, covered with gold paper and decorated with little bells. In the centre is a picture of the manger, lighted from the rear by a small candle burning under glass. In ope corner is a picture of Adam and jEve, and on the other the winged heads of angels. The boys carry the? star from house to house, shaking the staff to make ’the bells ring as they sing carols of the birth of Christ. There is great emulation among the schoolboys as to the carrying of the star —a custom which has been handed down from such antiquity that no one is able to recall its ongn.