New Year’s Eve festivities
During the New Year, we have celebrations related to fending off misfortune through songs and loud noises. We call these events Uraturi, and it roughly translates to wishes: wishing someone wealth for the coming year, prosperity in agriculture, and a long life. Generally, these events are very loud under the pre-Christian tradition of scaring evil spirits, but these folk traditions have gained some religious chants over time.
Mersul cu Ursu – Going with the bear
As a sacred symbol, the bear people dress up as bears and dance, sometimes with a bear wrangler and sometimes as a group depending on the region of the country. In the past, costumes used to be made out of straws and burnt at the end of the dance contributing to the idea of death, purification and rebirth in the New Year.
dcnews wrote a really good article on the topic, and I selected a nice fragment:
“In Romanian mythology, the bear is invested with multiple apotropaic (protective), therapeutic, and meteorological virtues. In the past, there was even a belief that a newborn, if rubbed with bear fat on the body, would gain strength and the luck of the bear after the first wash. The sick or frightened would be smoked with the hair plucked from the wild animal’s fur, or it was customary for those physically weak or sickly to be “baptized,” taking on the name of Urs (Bear) or Ursul (The Bear) to ward off diseases and death. This ritual was distinct from Christian baptism. Since the Middle Ages, there have been attestations that bears were used for healing lower back pains: this refers to the bear stepping (trained bears specifically used to massage with their paws)”
The goat dance
The reason why I love Reddit is because one comment said: now I understand what my neighbors are doing upstairs…
The oldest account of this dance was made in Descriptio Moldaviae written in 1714.
Due to Romania having multiple regions practicing this ancient dance, there are multiple meanings behind the goat depending on the area of the country in which it is practiced. The best description I found here (in Romanian) but I chose to translate a shorter version from here :
“After ritually sacrificing the pig, not just at any time, but on Ignat (20th December), our ancestors would engage in the Goat Dance, a dance that culminated, in its initial tragic phase, with the killing of the goat. The Goat Dance was not a random dance, as barbaric (weird term used) groups of revelers practice it today, but rather a complete fertility ritual, with the goat personifying fertility deities. At the same time, the goat symbolizes a dying world.
At the end of a frenetic dance with solemn rhythms, the goat would fall, lifeless. Following a mysterious dialogue between the shepherd and the spirit of the goat, suddenly the goat comes back to life, symbolically awakening nature to a new life. The community would gather around the goat, which resumed the jerky rhythm of the dance as if nothing had happened.”
Jocul Mastilor – The game of masks
The idea behind this dance is to connect the world of the dead with the living between the passing of the years when it is believed that the barrier between life and death opens up.
Reading this article, we get to understand that the purpose of the mask is to make a caricature of the worst parts of the community, ranging from the physical aspects to the worst parts of human behaviour. Basically, it is a sort of theater where the worst type of behaviour from the village/community is put on blast.
What I found really interesting was the fact that these types of traditions are described as popular (folk) theater. The masks can be even more complex when you add previous traditions focused on animals, like those mentioned before, or actors like police, park rangers, bear wranglers, minorities, or anything else that one could think of at the time. As an example, you bring the bear wrangler, bears, goats and a story develops between the group.
Header image from https://mariustuca.ro/obiceiuri-si-traditii/traditii-si-superstitii-mersul-cu-capra-si-umblatul-cu-ursul-45263.html
Dracula's Guide to Romania 
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