Romanian Christmas

Romanian Christmas

Christmas is celebrated on December 25th in Romania. There is an interesting difference between St. Nicolas, Mos Nicolai and Santa Claus, Mos Craciun, or Father Christmas. Mos Nicolai comes early in December and gives a small gift only to children. Mos Craciun is more like our traditional Santa. You can see him on selected street corners with a bell and donation pot. I’m not sure if he is affiliated with the Salvation Army or not. Everyone gets a Christmas tree and stuffs it into their apartments, but not before Christmas Eve. Everyone gets and gives presents, but not to the excess that we do in America. It’s a good perspective, not overdone.

We are not experts on the Romanian Christmas celebrations. We have a hard time reading the signs posted on the announcement columns and church doors. It’s not because our Romanian is so bad, but because the signs are often in Hungarian or German. We’ve been to an Hungarian version of River Dance, without the production values, that appeared to us to be a fund raiser for an orphanage or day camp. We’ve been to the annual concert of the local music high school – the choir better than the orchestra. We’ve been to a free Christmas Eve performance of the nutcracker – the orchestra excellent. We attended two church services today at the same church, one in Hungarian and one in German. No telling what else we missed because of our language failings.

The Gypsy band was out parading yesterday drumming up donations. They consisted of an accordion, a saxophone, a drum, and a fellow dressed up as a big bird, though not yellow. We toasted our traditional bread, the Cozonac. It is like a fruit cake but with bread instead of cake, and really pretty good, although I don’t know if it’s suppose to be put in a toaster. Ours was store bought instead of homemade. We listened to the neighborhood boys come sing carols for us, but we didn’t know how much to pay them. It’s something like Halloween for them. We missed our American traditions of Pecan Turtles – made by Tim, Pumpkin Bread & Nancy Pratt Candy – made by Nancy, but we did make raspberry chocolate truffles.

From the pictures taken on Christmas Day you can tell we’ve had a white Christmas. I’ve taken the job of being in charge of keeping the stairs to our apartment swept of snow. I do it as a way to meet the neighbors and to wish them Craciun Fericit. I wish it to you as well.