The Colonel was already drunk when he got into his ABI to leave. We saw him to the gate, me, my sister, my father and my mother. Our grandmother was already asleep, not interested in political change.
“These are for you”, he said to my mom and he gave her 6 military cans of beef. “They are war supplies. We took them all. Let us just hope the fucking Russians don’t attack us, because in that event our soldiers will have nothing to eat”, he said, and he climbed in the Jeep-like ABI, and those two soldiers waiting for him were as drunk as he was, but that didn’t matter, coz the ABI’s engine came to life and the car rolled away into the night. As usual in my town, lacking street lights, it was pitch dark. It was a moonless night, and we couldn’t see the stars. Clouds were gathering. But from every house there were fairytale lights. There were the candles burning on the Christmas trees, and the trees were placed as usual so they could be seen from outside. They were all beautiful, and the town itself was beautiful and that was the first time that day I felt like it was Christmas Eve. We all felt it so we went inside and knocked on my grandmother’s door, and woke her up. My mom brought to her first floor room Christmas fruitcakes, sweets and warm milk for everyone. Coffee for my father and we all ate and sung carols and talked like a family. We were waiting for the young men from town to come and sing their traditional carols so that we would all know it’s Christmas. Lord Jesus was about to come again into the world as a baby, and we were all there to celebrate it. That was more important than the revolution continuing in the blaring Opera TV set upstairs, more important than our life without decent shoes.
Christmas was a magical time. It was the day after Ignat’s Day that all young men and women, which means everyone over 15 years old, gathered in packs. Each street had its own pack, or, in places with shorter streets, a few blocks had their own pack. All these packs had names. Ancient names. Names from times when communism wasn’t yet invented by Marx. Like Pietrari, the Stone Masons. They were from a street not very far from ours. But nobody, not even the old people, ever remember anyone there in the stone business. And these packs would go to a host family, and they would sing carols, pray and do other small preparations. Fasting was required and of course everybody dressed in traditional white clothes. Girls with pitch black skirts and vests, boys with those white sheepskin vests embroidered in red, made by my grandmother.
It was nightfall on the 24th they were waiting for. And it was already the 24th.
“Are they coming?” my mom asked anxiously.
“Yep”, replied my father, quite satisfied. “Christmas cannot start without their carols. The Revolution asked them, however, to be decent this year, because many people have died and we should mourn them. So there won’t be any meteleauă this year”. He hadn’t finished when I was already gasping for air. Meteleauă was my favorite festival. It was the winter number one event and was supposed to happen on the 28th. It was like a carnival. The boys in each pack would dress up as something funny and, usually drunk, they paraded through the town. They were supposed to do stupid things to keep away devils, and they were so funny. Meteleauă was also a process of initiation. The young child would get drunk for the very first time and would parade through the entire city as a man should, with his head up, proud, and his mom and dad would wave from the crowd and he would know that he was a man, and everyone would treat him like he was a man, from then on. So he would stop greeting everybody with sărut-mâna or “I kiss your hand” and would say “Hello” or “Good day” instead.
No more meteleauă was news as sad as no Christmas presents. But as we were waiting there, my mom started to smile and said:
“I heard something upstairs. You kids go and check under the Christmas tree. Perhaps it was Father Christmas”, and she didn’t have time to finish her sentence. We rushed past her and went straight to the Christmas tree, and yes, something was waiting there for us. Our presents were light and we opened them eagerly. Each of us had a handmade woollen set of hat, muffler, gloves and socks. Mine were royal blue and my sister’s were scarlet. There were some chocolates too.
“We love you, mommy”, we both cried out, and rushed to her and dad. And all that I saw on their faces was pure happiness.
Only today, after so many years, do I realize that she must have stayed awake into the night making those woollen winter clothes for us and I realize how difficult it must have been for her, and I love her for it. I also love my father for his support. That present was the most beautiful present I ever got for Christmas. I was sure I would get nothing, but I got something which was more valuable than all the things that our looted and destroyed bookstore offered, or all the things that the revolution brought us in hypermarkets.
We were already downstairs, new hats and new socks on when we heard the young men singing for our neighbor. Next it was our turn. So we waited. And we heard the gate opening and then closing and many many footsteps gathering before our door. Then, those 30 or so young men started to sing as loud as they could “Joseph and Mary” and that carol literally crashed against our chests and our bodies, and hearts got to know that it was Christmas.
My father started to cry and I realized that he never had cried when we listened to that carol before, when my grandfather was still with us. “Why are you crying?” I once asked him and he said he cried because he was the oldest in our family, that he remembered how it was when he was in the pack, singing those beautiful carols, and he cried because he was the next man in our family to die.
I swear to God, I was so young when he talked with me about why he cried when he listened to that carol that I couldn’t really understand him. I tried to, but it felt so strange to cry at that very happy moment. Only years later, in 1995, when my father had been buried 10 months, I started to cry the very moment the words “Joseph and Mary” hit my chest, and I cried like my father did and like my grandfather did before him, knowing everything my father used to know, and my grandmother was dead too. Only my mother, my sister, and I were left. We gave the young men money for their performance, because money was everything those days. Money had become more important than life.
However, back in 1989 we gave the young men the sweet cheese cake that my mom made for them and a kilo of smoked ham. That particular ham we made from the pig’s muscles situated along the back bone. It was kept in salt for one day and smoked for another two. We used to eat it raw if smoked more than 10 days. It was still fresh so the young men had to fry it before thrusting it into their stomachs. We also gave them 100 lei, the same amount that Ceauşescu promised everybody in his last speech.
The following year was to be the last year people gave those sweet cakes and meat to the carol singers. Romania wasn’t starving anymore and imported meat was available in food stores all the time. The young men didn’t fast and those cakes and the meat they got they couldn’t eat. So when they got drunk they had food fights with the bread and meat, and threw it in the snow, and the old people saw it, and we all just stopped giving those traditional gifts. And they got only money, until Romania entered the European Union in 2004 and young people migrated in mass to work in construction, as babysitters, as dishwashers and cleaning toilets for our wealthier European brothers and entire streets were left without their young people’s packs. I heard that the heads of families still cry. The only difference is that they cry not because they are hit with the lyrics of “Joseph and Mary”, but because there are no lyrics to hit them. No carols, except those re-mixed modern carols coming out of not old black and white, but new color TV sets. Merry Christmas, Romania, wherever you are!