Ho Freakin' Ho...

Ah yes: the holiday season has rolled into town, like those carloads of delightful, crazed relatives who are no doubt breaching the barricades of your quiet home at this very moment [fade to fruitcake jokes and tales of Uncle Cletus's kidney stones]. Luckily, I'm safe and out of reach (yes, that was a joke). Now is the time to reflect on family, friends, the exploits of the past year...and where we're going to sleep, now that the cousins have taken over all of the beds.

Thanksgiving was actually terrific here: a few of us volunteers from western Romania got together at a cabin in the mountains, along with Romanian friends and coworkers, for a nice cross-cultural feast. Because my friend Kenny is a former rancher and current agro/animal-husbandry volunteer in his village, he managed to procure two of the largest turkeys I'd ever seen -- one cooked the conventional way in a wood-fire "soba", the other deep-fat fried...which was, for the Romanians, a glorious and terrifying experience indeed. The meal was a wonderful combination of American and Romanian fare, and because I had brought a young French couple along from a nearby village, we even had home-bottled French wine to wash it all down. Considering that the first Thanksgiving was an intercultural event (i.e. the Indians providing, the Pilgrims eating), I think we really got back to the spirit of it all, here in the Romanian wilderness.

December 5th is Saint Nicholas' Day (Sfantul Nicholae) among the Romanian Orthodox, at which point you opt either to buy little gifts for loved ones or, far more entertainingly, buy a decorated stick or large wooden spoon/paddle with which to "beat" them for their failings...or both. An odd mix of the carrot and the stick, but everyone seems to enjoy themselves and the punishment is not meted out with any real conviction. My class of volunteers were all in Sibiu, a stately old medieval city in Transylvania (central Romania) for in-service training at the time, and thoroughly enjoyed watching everyone chase each other around with presents and weapon in hand.

Christmastime is a wonderful season in this country, even when many people (and local governments) have very little money with which to "deck the halls". Anything that is worth looking forward to is a good thing in this life, as far as I'm concerned. Say what you will about the commercialism and excess, but now that Romanians are at last beginning to find themselves with even a little disposable income, they are coming to learn how great it can be to spoil one's self here and there -- with a few more Christmas gifts, with a few more strings of lights or garlands over the door...or with that terrible, tacky plastic "animated" Santa that no town seems able to resist. Timisoara, our nearest city, is absolutely ablaze with Christmas lights [see pictures], and given the approach of E.U. accession on January 1st, it's an understatement to say that there is a crackle of excitement in the air at the approach of Christmas and New Year's. Romanians, in general, are somewhat skeptical of the effect that accession will have on their country, but for now, most are willing to suspend that disbelief, at least temporarily.

The other holiday tradition that you will see represented in the photos (a warning to anyone without a strong stomach) is the annual killing of the pig. Every Romanian family goes through the process of killing, butchering, and eating a pig at some point in the holiday season. I'd tend to think, though, that this is a tradition that goes back to long before the founding of the Christian church: a sacrificial offering for Winter Solstice (Dec. 21st) perhaps? In any event, it was quite an event to behold. On this occasion, the pig was actually slaughtered not at my family's home but in the next village over, and then was slung in the back-seat of the family car. It definitely gave me a new appreciation for the origins of pork, bacon, sausage, and other delectable pig products, to see this feast go from "stable to table" in a few hours. As Romanians say, pofta buna ("good appetite").

So as not to end on a sour note (or sow note, as the case may be), after spending Christmas with my terrific host family, I am due to head back to Sibiu for New Year's, where people will celebrate not only the joining of the E.U., but also the designation of Sibiu as one of two "European Cultural Capitols" for 2007, along with Luxembourg. Not too shabby.

So light the yule log, have some of that lighter-fluid eggnog your cousin makes, and enjoy those visions of sugar plums, Mos Craciun, Hannukah Harry, Kwanzaa, the Great Spirit, Nordic gods, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or whatever tradition you subscribe to...

Happy Holidays, everyone!!

P.S. - ANOTHER NOTE ON PHOTOS (why do I feel like I do a lot of these?!): for those of you wanting captions or more information on each photo your viewing in Winkflash, just go to the "Comments" tab for each photo, where I usually put a full description of what's going on. Yes, I wish you didn't have to click to a separate page for comments...but such is life! Check it out.