Referat Winter Traditions

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Each community has its own religious approach to life, to assessing the values of time and space. Time with the Christians begins with the creation of the world: " Mundus non factus est in tempore, sed cum tempore" says St. Augustine; Jesus Christ is the time-axis for them: waiting for Him, history going toward Him and being fulfilled after Him. The Christian era was devised and calculated in the 6 th century by Dionysius Exiguus, a monk originating from Scytia Minor. He reckoned the years passed from the birth of Christ, taking year I to be "the year of Redemption", "the year of the Lord", or "the year of the Incarnation". There is no doubt that first-century Christians used to observe Jewish traditions, and celebrate some feasts of that religion. Two of the greatest holidays, namely Easter and Whitsuntide and perhaps St, John s Day in summer, developed new and richer significations. From an ethnological viewpoint, these holidays correspond to the three moments of the harvest time, and the Christian calendar records them as a messianic fulfillment through the foundation of Christ s Church and the obtainment "of the everlasting life-giving water of redemption". If we view oral tradition from this angle we can rediscover that the popular traditions of Christian communities today, implicitly of the Romanians, are rooted on the Old Testament. If a system of Romanian folk traditions were to be worked out from a Christian, more precisely paleo-Christian perspective, and claimed to be soundly document, then the author should necessarily turn to biblical archaeology for pertinent information. In the tradition of the old religion, holidays used to commemorate the death and resurection of divinities rather that their birth. The Christmas feast can be traced back to the 3 rd century, when, as the Byzantine historian Nichifor Calist tells us, 20000 Christians gathered to celebrate the Birthday of the Lord were burnt alive. The event took place under the rule of Emperors Diocletianus and Maximiam who started a campaign of persecutions against Christians. The oldest attestation of a Christmas celebration on December 25 dates to the 4 th century and is inscribed in the Philocalian Calendar. This date, fixed in Western Europe, was based on the assumption that Jesus had been born during the census taken under Caesar Augustus, i.e. on December 25, 754 ab Urbe condita, i.e. from the foundation of Rome. This date is supported by St.John Golden Mouth, the Blessed Jeronimus and the Blessed St.Augustin. In Eastern Europe Christmas was celebrated on the 6-th of January (until the 4 th cent.) because, according to tradition, Jesus was born and baptised on the same day. The holiday was named "Feast of the Lord s Manifestation", Theophany or Epiphany. Progressively, the Eastern Church separated the two events: in A.D. 388 the Patriarchate of Antiohia, and in A.D. 380 the Church of Constantinople made that decision. The indication to celebrate Christmas Day on December 25 th belongs to Gregory of Nazianz. In support of that date St.Gregory the Theologist delivered a speech titled: On the Manifestation of Good, or On the Birth of Our Saviour. The date of 25th December was adopted by the Church of Alexandria and the Church of Jerusalem in the 5 th century (432) and 7 th century, respectively. In the Armenian Church they still celebrate Christmas and Epiphany on the same day, January 6. This information is of overriding importance for understanding the rang of rituals and practices peculiar to the Romanian traditional folk communities. As the population which lived in the present territory of Romania belonged to the Constantinople-governed Eastern Orthodoxy, the twelve-day period (established as "festive" by the Council of Tours only in A.D. 567) had little bearing on the structure of their winter calendar customs. During the first centuries of Christianity (a "religio illicita" until A.D. 313 when the Edict of Mediolanum was issued), the catechumens used to be baptised on Christmas Eve, at Easter and on Whitsuntide Day. From the 4 th century on, in the Byzantium, the importance of the event made the emperor himself attend the divine service, on which occasion the "Imperil Hours" were being read. In the year 598, on Christmas Day, 10.000 English nationals were administered baptism. From the folklorist s viewpoint Christmas is a feast of the Calendar cycle, celebrated at a fixed date, the 25th of December. Unlike the secular New Year feasted on the 1st of January, the new Church year begins on the 1st of September, which coincides significantly with the beginning of the Jewish secular year settled by the tradition of the Old Law to mark the beginning of Creation. Also, it is at that date that Jesus Christ is supposed to have begun preaching in public. Let us recall the so-called "Byzantine", "Constantinopolitan", or "from Adam" era, a terminology used in the 7th century A.D. From the cancellary of the Byzantine Empire it spread to South-Danubian Slavs, to the Romanians and the Russians. It was in use at the Princelcourts of the Romanian Countries until the 18th century. In the Roman-Catholic Church, the religious year begins with the first Sunday of the Advent, Proximal to the 30th of November. Romanians today celebrate Christmas on the 25 th of December. It has the richest and most complex ritual structure, attracting people of almost any age, sex and social standing. Traditionally, within a 24-hour interval (Dec.24-25) children and adults go carolling, bearing the star, or Morning Star, and representing the popular drama of Jesus Birth (Vicleim), of The Three Wise Men (Irozii). The whole community takes part in the celebrations. In our opinion, carolling is the most important and, at the same time, the oldest and best structured ritual. This is the initial significance preserved in traditional Romanian form: colind, colindat (carol, carolling), i.e. calling, announcement. In our case, it is the announcement, the heralding of Jesus Birth, the beginning of redemption. The implication of greeting, steadily underscored by folklorists and ethnologists - as an expression of joy for the fulfillment of the messianic prophesies - has become a dominant feature in the past hundred years only, especially in the last fifty years. The practice of carolling with the Romanians should strictly be delimited from the noisy and dramatic revelry of the Roman festival of the calendae. In his famous sermon written against the pagan forms of celebrating the calendae, St.John Golden Mouth referred to the celebration of the New Year by the Romans. In the East, they are more temperate and hieratic, due presumably to the proximity of the Judaic, Oriental space primary Christianity had been rooted in. In his report to Emperor Trajan Plinius, Governor of Bitinia states that those who adhered to the new faith used to gather together before sunrise "carmenque Christo quasi deo dicere secum invicem". In the apostolic era, Christians used to sing hymns in the synagogues, as a sign of gratitude for the fulfillment of the messianic prophesies. It is also in the sinagogues that, in the early days of Christianity, psalms were sung. The overwhelming influence of Byzantine hymnography which undoubtedly is the groundwork of group carolling practices with the Romanians and the South-Danubian populations, is clearly underlined by N.Cartojan: "the Byzantine literature reached the apex of religious poetry through hymnography, which accompanied the divine service". The origins of Byzantine hymnographic production relate to the Syrian religious poetry and, through it, to semitic poetry, especially to the Hebrew psalms. Roman Melodul, a great personality who created sacred poetry in the Byzantium, authored hymns for the Feast of the Nativity, Palm Sunday, Passion Friday and Easter Sunday. Other renowned hymn writers are Teodor Studitul, Andrei de Creta, Ioan Damaschinul and even some Byzantine emperors like Constantine Porphirogenitus and Leo the Wise. From very early Christian times vigils used to be kept on the eve of important holidays, the community preparing itself for the solemn event that was going to be celebrated. The liturgical day would begin in the evening, as it stands written in the Book of Creation: evening it was, morning it was, the first day. Carolling with the goat takes place, therefore, on the "liturgical day". Obviously, the arrival of the goat mask could look downright grotesque and contradictory if we were to accept that it represents no more that one of the many Dionysian pageants that has survived over the time (1500-2000 years), or as a substitution for the king of the Saturnalia doomed to sacrification at the end of the feast. The moment of the goat s death, its bemoaning, burial, funeral procession and its revival is dramatizing rather an old animal sacrifice rite. The pre-Christian religious practices in Southeastern Europe, in the Eastern Mediterranean Basin and with various occasions by the Jews used to sacrifice domestic and sometimes wild animals. The best known sacrifice described in the speciality literature is the goat in the "Countryside Dionysians". The Assyro-Babylonians sacrificed also gazelle. The custom of choosing a "scapegoat", a "pharmakol" goes back to biblical times in the Eastern zone of the Mediterranean. Symbolically, ill-luck, disease and the sins of a person or group of persons used to be transferred onto objects, animals, birds or individuals, who were thrown into the river, the sea, lapidated, etc. The sacrifice of the scapegoat was specific to classical cultures and is still encountered with certain populations, so-called primitive. In ancient Greece, playing the scapegoat was occasionally assumed by an individual of his own free will. The summit of this self-sacrifice is embodied in the god, who in many religions - a typical case being the crucification of Jesus - takes upon himself all the sins of this world. which means "it that carries it far away", signifies "a spirit through which all sins were forgiven. The goat devoted to Jahve was sacrificed, while the other one was carried into the wilderness burdened with the sins of the whole people. The feast of the reconcilliation was the only day when the great priest entered the Holy Sanctuary and offered sacrifice for sin, for himself and for the people. The goat was brought alive to the Temple yard, the priest put his hands on the animal s head and confessed all the sins committed by the people. Thus burdened, the goat was carried by a man into the desert. On coming back, the man had to wash his body and clothes before entering the community. This holiday is intended to re-establish the relationship between Israel and Iahve in the terms of the Sinai promise. The ritual on the Day of forgiveness foreshadows the unique and perfect sacrifice made by Jesus Christ to reconciliate the human being with God and have the sins forgiven. "He did not enter through the blood of goats or calves, but through his own blood won everlasting redemption". The Trulan Council (Constantinople, 692) expressedly bans "vetul aut cervolo facere". We doubt that this interdiction had in view polytheistic sacrifice traditions. It is rather an attempt at irrevocably eliminating some old Jewish practices of this type. We are certain that group carolling, accompanied by the goat and the Old Man masks is an ancient ritual rooted in early Christianity, that they represent an extension of the Jewish Yom hakkipurim ritual preserved in the Romanian oral culture to this day. If the Middle Ages and the Late Middle Ages represent periods of great vitality for the development of carols in Europe (the masterpieces created then are still enjoyed today), the first Christian centuries witnessed a great unity of expression at the level of Christianity, in general, and of the Mediterranean Basin, in particular, due to a common substratum of Judaic ritual, known and partially observed by the apostles themselves. Eastern Orthodox Christianity of Byzantine extraction proves to be a better preserved in oral folk tradition. It can still supply some elements deeply rooted in the Old Testament, if the researcher takes the trouble to search into documents. The existence of similar phenomena in some Western zones, which received the new faith during the first centuries A.D. (France, England, Italy), are realiable arguments in favour of our viewpoint, proving that, in the beginning, Christian forms of expression had a unitary character. The carol and the practice of carolling are modern ritual variants of ancient hymns which used to herald the good news that messianic prophesies had been fulfilled. They had been intended to remake the communitary unity of the Christian Church expressed by the participation of believers in the liturgical service. In our view, biblical archaeology, a branch less familiar to folklorists, could offer a multitude of explanations and a more nuance understanding of many folk traditions associated with the cycle of the calendar and of family life. In the light of folkloric archaeology, carolling and its significations should be sought in the palaeo-Christian tradition of the Latin-speaking Eastern Roman Empire. It appears that the 7 th century marked a crucial moment in the history of Central and Southeastern Christianity in Europe through the many reforms and "normative acts" that caused politically-mediated changes, influencing zonal culture and, implicitly, the Romanian oral culture, too. 쥁`