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The Carol "Sorcova"

This tradition is a symbol of fertility, health and purity. "Sorcova" is a bouquet used for New Year's wishes. Children invoke the divinity of vegetation for the health of the host in the morning of the first day of the New Year. This bouquet is made up of one or several fruit-tree twinges as apple-tree, pear-tree, cherry-tree, or plum tree. Nowadays people use an apple-tree or pear-tree twig decorated with colored paper and flowers made up of colored paper, too.

The children touch everybody slightly with "sorcova", wishing them to blossom like apple-tree and pear-tree, to live and grove old like these and to be as strong as a stone or as iron. The children get all kinds of gifts such as cakes, biscuits, candies, oranges, apples or money. At the end of this day, children put the bouquet near the eastern window in the house, keeping it for the next year.
 
The carol "Sorcova"
Sorcova, vesela,
Să trăiti, să-mbătrâniti,
Ca un măr, ca un păr,
Ca un fir de trandafir,
Tare ca piatra,		 Iute ca săgeata,
Tare ca fierul,
Iute ca otelul,
La anu' si la multi ani!		 The Carol Sorcova, by Sorin Manole
Maria Dumitru
Artwork: Sorin Manole

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