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Winter's most awaited for holiday is Christmas, Christians celebrating on 25 December the birth of Jesus Christ the Savior.
In Romanian culture, Father Christmas is a character with opposing features: he has miraculous powers, specific to gods and fairy tale heroes but also qualities and flaws specific to humans. As a layperson, he is an elderly person, an old shepherd with a snow-white beard, neighbour of Father Eve, his younger brother. Under Christianity's influence, Santa Claus also appears as an apocryphal figure: he was born before all the saints, he is the head of all the shepherds in the village where Christ was born and others. Christ's birth legends depict the ethnographic scenery of a pastoral village where Santa Claus was living and had big houses, stables, green fields for cattle. Unexpectedly, an unknown woman arrives in this peaceful village, who, feeling her time has come to give birth, knocks on Father Eve's door and asks for lodging. Arguing that he is a poor man, he sends her to his richer brother Father Christmas. The latter, without knowing that this woman is the Mother of God, will not welcome her or sends her to give birth in the cattle's stables.
Father Christmas' wife (Craciuneasa) helps the stranger give birth, and is punished for that by her husband, having her hands cut off from the elbows. When Father Christmas finds out that our Lord Jesus was born in his stables, he repents and asks God for forgiveness becoming the first Christian, the most elderly saint, the husband of the woman who helped Virgin Mary give birth.
When Christianity appeared, Christmas was such a revered god that he could not be ousted completely from the folk calendar and the conscience of the people who adopted the faith in Christ. Through everything he does, Father Christmas resists or tries to prevent Baby Jesus's birth as His arrival first entails Father Christmas's departure (death), the contemporary traditions about the good, generous Santa, carrying many gifts being scholarly influences that permeated into popular culture.
Several practices attested in all of Romania's areas take place on Christmas, having at their centre the singing of Christmas carols and family gatherings around the Christmas table.
Christmas is also called the family's celebration; it is the occasion when families reunite, parents, children, grandchildren make gifts to each other, enjoy the moments spent together around the Christmas table, having the faith that properly spending the holidays will lead to a richer year.
