Traditions and customs in Šariš as you know and do not know them.
There is perhaps no more beautiful and tradition-rich holiday of the year than Christmas. They begin with the Advent season , which in the past was associated with snow crunching underfoot, frost stinging the face. The blanket of snow had the significance of covering everything that people experienced throughout the year, bringing peace and tranquillity into the lives of families. Just as the snow fell to the ground. Quietly. And it was at such an expectant time that families and homesteads prepared for Christmas, interwoven with traditions and customs. We present a few of them in region of Šariš, which can still be found in more than one household today. Their wisdom, their wit, is our heritage that should be preserved.Cleaning
In order to make sure that Santa Claus came to a clean environment, the houses in Šariš were cleaned for the last time just before Christmas Eve, usually a week before the holidays. If there was an incantation, it was for three days.
Waffles
In the past, baking wafers was one of the duties of the rectors, who also had the income from baking wafers listed in the decree. The grain for grinding the flour or the flour for the wafers was brought to them by the pupils who went round the houses in the run-up to Christmas, especially on St Catherine's Day.
The wafers made of simple unleavened dough began to be baked in iron tongs just after Lucia. On one side of the tongs there was usually the sign of the cross, on the other a twig or a chalice. The best pupils, selected and examined by the rector, distributed the baked wafers in baskets to the houses according to orders two or three days before Christmas Eve. Each family received between ten and twenty water wafers, a few sugar wafers and rolled wafers in a basket. When the pupils had made a nice wreath, they were given food and money in the basket for Mr. Rector.
House and home decoration
Baby Jesus was born on straw, therefore Christmas holidays were in the past also marked by straw.
On the Vigil - Viliya, the father of the family brought a bundle of straw to the room and the first and second night the whole family slept on straw. Even the symbolic decoration for Christmas was made of straw.
Outside, people used to tie straw around the trees and then tap it with a stick and say: „You're going to be a parent!“
In Šariš they also used a potato - gruľa - into which straw stalks were densely stuck, decorated at the end with bows made of brightly coloured paper. This created a straw hedgehog called zvizda - star, which hung from the loft above the table. Trees as we know them today were not. The top of the trees usually hung above the table were made of fir or spruce and were decorated with apples, nuts, wafers and holy pictures from the indulgences the family visited during the year.
Customs and traditions on „Viliya“
On Christmas Eve, a strict fast was announced - the strictest of the year.
This day has always been considered not only the last day since Lucia, in which darkness prevails over light, but also evil forces over good ones.
That is why, for example, in Torisa in Šariš, adults used to tell children on Christmas Eve to avoid fighting, because it was said that whoever earned a fight on Christmas Eve would be beaten for the whole year.
In some villages in Šariš, on „Viľija“, children were allowed to eat only one baked potato and eat it with raw cabbage. This was despite the smell that wafted through the kitchen.
- It was tradition that nothing was lent to anyone on that day, so that the barefoot women would not get hold of their owner's belongings and rob him, his family, or his farm.
- On the contrary, they welcomed with joy every sneeze, which, unlike today, did not herald the approaching flu, but an increase in the household.
- Before dinner, the girls used to run out to the street in front of the house with the first hot baked bobalka-biscuits, which were part of the Christmas Eve dinner with poppy seeds. Whichever man they saw first, that was the name their betrothed was to have.
- The maids also divined whether they would live to see it within a year before the big dinner - they brought firewood into the room and counted it by the stove. When they brought an even number of logs into the house in their arms it meant that they would be living as a couple within a year.
- Courageous was the one who ran out in the evening with bated breath and brought chips. If he succeeded in one breath, it guaranteed him a lot of money in the future.
- In the same way, if there was a pig in the family, they would go to it and ask how many years they would live. How many times the pig squealed so many years she predicted.
- Before supper the coals were burnt on as many scoops as the householder had grain. Whichever ember produced the most ash, from that grain they expected the biggest harvest.
- The housewives brought nuts, peas and apples to the Christmas Eve table. Each member of the family took one of each and threw them into the four corners of the room so that there would be plenty in the house the following year.
- The Christmas Eve dinner, rich, large and somewhere in the villages, used to be eaten at a table wrapped with a chain, supposedly to keep the family together for the coming year.
- All the iron implements of the farm, such as pitchforks, slats and harrows, were used to be put under the table that evening, and the whole family kept their feet on them during dinner, so that they would harden up and not get injured in the work in the fields.
In Saris it was a holy duty, so that the neighbor could go to his neighbor's house for the holidays. But it was always the shorter one who went to the taller one, never the other way around. Upwards meant more money, health and happiness in farming, more poultry, game, a rich yard.
The Christmas Eve dinner in almost every family began with a prayer and anointing of all family members with honey. The honey cross on the foreheads of the girls was supposed to make them as sweet as honey and as diligent as bees in the year, while the boys were supposed to make the girls like them.
In different parts of Šariš, seven- and in richer families even twelve-egg dishes were prepared. The traditional Christmas dishes included yucha, gentian soup with gribami, slifčanka or plum soup from boiled prunes with potatoes, Lenten cabbage soup with potatoes and baked bobalky with sweetened poppy seeds. Sourdough cakes, a round kuch cake and a gruel cake with potato filling were baked.
Cattle and poultry were also taken from each dish. However, a cat was left empty, as it was considered to be fake, then a dog, as it was said to be born blind, and a horse, as it was said to have hooves like the devil.
Traditions in the Šariš region were born mostly in villages, they have survived to this day and wherever they are found, their mission is to celebrate Christmas, to give peace, joy and to appreciate that the family is together.
At the end, a vignette by the Sharis ethnologist Ján Lazorík, which belongs to Christmas:
„... I blame, I blame, on the holy Hodi, too great a pile of chic fruit, all over the lush fertility, the good birth, the variety,
of the fathers, and of the poor, and of the rich, and of the rich, and of the rich, and of the rich, and of the rich, and of the rich, and of the rich, and of the rich, and of the rich, and of the rich, and of the rich, and of the rich, and of the rich, and of the rich.
Kirmakoch na sto yurmakoch, ramanoch jak vahanoch calf jahničkoch, jak na rakice guźičkoch
babu machiňu, dzifku kokiňu, vipraśanku śviňu!
Into the paws of the clever, and into the feet of the quick-footed blackbirds.
And if we blame you, as many people as are on the outside, as many people as are on the hood,
as a shepherd, may the Lord bless you...“
