Carolling is one of the most loved Romanian winter traditions. From mid-December onwards, groups of children walk from house to house singing songs called colinde. The grown-ups answer the door, listen to a song, then give the children little gifts - sweets, walnuts, an apple, or sometimes a small coin. By the end of the evening the singers' bags are heavy.
Around New Year, in some northern villages, you might see grown-ups dressed in incredible costumes of straw, fur and ribbons. One famous one is the goat dance - a person wears a wooden goat's head with a snapping wooden jaw, and dances through the village while musicians play. Another is the bear dance, where dancers wear heavy real bearskins (very old, handed down for generations) and stamp through the streets.
These dances are very old, much older than Christmas itself. People used to think that making lots of noise and acting like wild animals would scare bad luck away and welcome a good year ahead. The traditions have been kept alive by villages where parents teach the dances to their kids.
Even in big modern cities like Bucharest and Cluj, you can still meet groups of carollers in the street in late December. And in the mountain villages of Maramureș and Bucovina, on the right day of the year, you might see a whole street full of dancing 'bears'. It is a midwinter unlike anywhere else in Europe.