Colindatul în cadrul culturii tradiţionale româneşti
Traditional Romanian Wassailing

Summary/Abstract: This article is part of a program intended to bring back into attention Christian values and meanings specifi c to the Romanian traditional culture. Door-to-door caroling, a fundamentally Christian ritual associated with the fi xed date of Christmas celebration, follows a pattern focused on integration of the entire community visited for wassailing in the sacred time of the Nativity of Jesus who sanctifi es creation. The ritual authority belongs to men (unmarried lads or married mature men) with gifts from God enabled and acquired by baptism and the 2-4 weeks preparation, in the very moment of theophanic manifestation; we also consider the memory of a joint celebration of the Appearance of Christ known in the East until the 4th century. Women and girls have to redeem the ritual and to prepare the domestic space for integration into the sacred feast. Carols today feature wishing and greeting. As a ritual form of expression performed by a group of men gifted by God, this is similar to the thaumaturgic ritual performed by căluş dancers during Pentecost. Similar to the feast day celebrating Epiphany–when wassailing groups still perform–Pentecost is about the appearance of the third person of the Holy Trinity, Holy Spirit. Some carol texts explicitly state this association. We believe redeeming cultural meanings and values of Romanian traditional Christian origin is an activity not only useful for understanding the true meaning of this culture, but even necessary at this point when the processes of diversifi cation and change of inherited cultural patterns reaches unprecedented authority.

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