Christmas in our village

Hello!

We are Livia and Daniel, aged 12. We are from a small village called Comanesti, which is not far from the town Suceava, where our teacher of English lives. In our village people have preserved customs which you will not see in towns and big cities.

On Christmas Eve, children deck the Christmas tree and in the afternoon they go caroling from house to house and people give them money, fruit or sweets. They start from 5-6 p.m. and sometimes come home at 9-10 p.m. We rarely go caroling alone; most of the time we take our friends with us so we are not afraid to be out at that time both because the villagers know us and because we are in a group of friends.

The Roma children who live in Humoreni, a village not far from ours, come to our houses to sing carols to us. They bring with them an icon representing the birth of Jesus decked with tinsel, lights and fir branches. We call it “Steaua” (The Star-because of the shape of the decked icon).

Our mothers cook all types of dishes two days before Christmas and sometimes all the family helps them. Five-six days before Christmas, those who have grown pigs, will cut them in the honour of Saint Ignatius. Then the women cook the meat. This is a very old custom and nowadays few people cut pigs as their ancestors did.

The drawings belong to Stefan from the 6th form and Mia, the 5th form, Comanesti School.

We wish you a MERRY CHRISTMAS on behalf of all our classmates and teachers from Comanesti and Humoreni Schools!