Paper Short Abstract:

The Romanian summer solstice feast is in decline in the rural areas. But since 2013, it started to be celebrated in the cities, under the influence of a new feast of the Romanian national shirt. The poster sketches the main lines of forging of a new national identity through an invented tradition.

Paper Abstract:

The summer solstice feast, celebrated all over Europe around 24th of June, takes two forms in Romania: one – Drăgaica – was traditionally related to the domesticated plants, while the other – Sânziene – was linked to the healing power of the savage plants. Both faces of the feast have almost disappeared, being encountered in many regions only as revivals.

But in the last few years, things started to change, in an accelerated rhythm. In 2013, an NGO dedicated to the promotion of Romanian values proposed the day of 24th of June to become The Universal Day of the Romanian Shirt (Ie). The new, invented feast was thus legitimated through the connection to the old feast of the summer solstice, when, as some Romanian folklorists claim (without having real data), the good fairies used to dance and bless the healing plants. This claim led to a plethora of new, invented practices, with little to no connection to the old solstice feast. Even more, this newly shaped feast got the role of forging or enhancing the Romanian identity, through the appeal to the Romanian blouse as well as to the ”traditional” (read: invented) feast of the solstice. The present poster tries to outline how the reshaping of the feast leads to the reshaping of the national identity.