Killing The Pig:Old Romanian Christmas Tradition,Guitars,Fun

I will start by describing an old tradition in Romania that you, if not familiar with it, you may find it less pleasant and why not, a bit barbarian.OK, I’ll take my chance. So…

Each year, on one of the days around Christmas, people in country side, kill/cut/sacrifice a pig that is grown usually in their own backyard farm. This is something that goes back a very long time, I guess, and I am not able to tell you the origin of this tradition. Romania is a Christian country. Well, this tradition I bet it’s not Christian, but pre-Christian. The fact is that it blended so well with Christmas that it became part of it, without anybody asking about the origin anymore.

Coming back to the point, this usually goes like this: the family gets together in the country side, kill/cut/sacrifice the pig, then prepare it on top of a fire, then slice it and prepare it for storage for the months to come. Because it happens on Christmas, usually a cold period, with snow, local Romanian drinks are also part of a tradition (think Whiskey or Vodka as more famous alternatives). Actually, if you want, you can look at this as a big barbecue, because actually a barbecue is always part of the process.

I was part of this tradition a week ago, at my parents in law. OK, I came in a bit later, to skip the part where they actually kill the pig, because I don’t like it…

OK, why am I telling you this? You may ask yourself where’s the relationship with playing the guitar?

Well, two days ago, Costin, the lead singer in my band invited us to …play at such an event. What?! Yeah, it’ll be fun, he says, you’ll see! Some friends of my brother invited us, yadda, yadda, yadda…

Aaaah…yeah, I guess…we’ll see…

OK, the fact is that we all spoke about it, but only 3 of us were available for that day, the other 2 were away for the holidays. So I packed up the guitar, took my gig bag thinking this might be like the strangest place I’ve ever played…

The fact is that I didn’t know where this will take place, Costin only told me the general coordinates, so I had a bit of trouble finding the location. I called the guy: do you have the cars outside? Will I see your car at the gates? Well, he says, there’s actually no gate, how to put it, it’s a large property near a lake, a small hotel…

OK, after a bit of search, there I was. A nice hotel and restaurant near a private lake…And I was expecting a backyard of some guy in the country side…

I entered the restaurant where everything took place and I was a bit overwhelmed at first. There were about 50-60 people there, a stage, drums, amplifiers, some guys already playing on stage, and a few familiar faces.

OK, but where’s the pig? I was expecting something different, you know…The fact is that this friend wanted to throw a party for his friends, so bought a pig, already sacrificed by the owner, brought it to the restaurant(that his uncle owns), then gave it to the chef to prepare it for everybody. Drinks and the meals were on the house. OK then, a real party!

I can say that we came in for 2 hours and we stayed there for about 6 hours, canceling other things we had planned for that evening, because we’ve felt very well there. The fact is that after all, from the band, only me and Costin, the lead singer, managed to get there, but hey, after all, we’ve been to a few parties together and can play a few good songs with only a guitar and voice.

As I was saying, there were a few guys there that could play a bit, a drummer that said he didn’t play drums in the last 12 years and that the one that taught him to play drums is our current drummer. What do you know?! My wife told me this, I didn’t know about it, she talked to the guy for a while, interesting story, too bad Coco, our drummer was not there to meet him. My wife told me he was explaining to her how he and his band of 12 years ago were opening for Kapela back then. Well, imagine when my wife told him that me and Costin used to play in Kapela…

The fact is I can say I was impressed how things went along when we’ve got together on that small stage, we started to play songs after only one minute of preparation for each of them, I knew the song and I was telling them the chords as we played. But in the end, everything went well. At one moment we also played a few “acoustic” songs, just me and Costin, the way we used to play at parties.

My Variax guitar proved to be the star of the evening, I can only say it was great and that if I would have a rack of guitars to chose from, for a cover songs party, between a Gibson Les Paul, a Strat and a Tele, I would pick a Variax anytime since I had there everything I wanted, just a knob away!

We played blues on my “Tele”, solos on my “Gibson” and balads on my “acoustic guitar”, and I can say it rocked the house!

I think that you couldn’t spend Christmas better than this, partying with friends playing the guitar!

Christmas rock parties rock, don’t you think?!

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