What is your perfect childhood holiday memory? For New Yorkers, it might be seeing the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall, going to midnight Mass, large family gatherings or braving the crowds in Times Square for the New Year’s ball drop.

Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi fondly remembers loud, drunk bears singing and dancing in her grandparents’ living room.

Actually, they were men wearing full bearskins, but to a little child the effect was the same: thrilling, enchanting and more than a little bit scary. You see, Ms. Alhindawi, 36, spent the first eight years of her childhood in the Trotus Valley of Romania where the bears descended on homes every holiday season to chase away any bad spirits from the previous year. Given the few diversions available during the era of Communist rule, the dancing bears were easily the highlight of the year.

“It was a beautiful thing to wake up on a snowy December morning and hear the drumbeats and chanting echoing through the valley,” she said. “The bear troupes would come door to door and everyone would let them in. They’re really rambunctious and they’d swing their heads around and cause a mess as the snow on them melted.”

Ms. Alhindawi lived with her grandparents in Moinesti while her Iraqi father and Romanian mother studied in Bucharest. She never forgot the raucous packs of bears playing music for tips, liquor and cubes of pig fat. Last year, she returned to her childhood home to spend time with her ailing Romanian grandmother — and to see the dancing bears again.

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The tradition originated among the Roma who migrated from India centuries ago. Ms. Alhindawi’s grandmother has childhood memories of Roma who went door to door with bear cubs who walked on the backs of villagers to alleviate back pain. When the bears aged, their owners had them dance in exchange for tips.

It’s not clear when the bears were replaced by people wearing skins or when ethnic Romanians adapted the ritual, Ms. Alhindawi said. But traditional Roma costumes are still worn during the holiday celebrations, and the songs reflect their influence.

Gaining access to photograph the bears was relatively simple because Ms. Alhindawi’s family was well known in the small town — they were the ones who made it to America. Her mother called childhood friends, and soon Ms. Alhindawi was spending a few frigid days with Dumitru Toloaca and his troupe of men, women and children clad in bearskins. She also spent some time with similar groups in nearby villages.

She photographed them performing and competing in the village square, where they were judged on the quality of their skins, costumes, dancing and overall presentation. She also followed them as they wandered at night visiting restaurants and a few homes to which they were invited.

“You can’t see much because it’s so dark,” Ms. Alhindawi said. “You can hear the crunch of the bear-claw boots on the snow and then, all of a sudden, the drumbeats break out and the sound of the flutes echoes through the alleyways. Then they pass under a streetlamp, and you see bears walking through a snowstorm!”

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Some things had changed over the years. Stores have more food and goods since the fall of Communism, she said, but few people can afford much. Rural areas like Moinesti have grown poorer while the cities have become wealthier, and most people have gone to Bucharest or nearby countries to work, leaving the village with mostly older people and children.

These changes have affected the bear traditions, too. Fewer people have the money to welcome, feed and tip the bears, while younger people, distracted by video games, television and the Internet, are less interested in the folk traditions. There are fewer bear troupes, and they perform for just a handful of days.

Ms. Alhindawi left Romania when she was 8, became a refugee in Yugoslavia and was resettled in Canada. When she was 16 her father, a doctor, and her mother, a mechanical engineer, moved the family, including her younger brother Austin, to Long Island. After studying neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University, Ms. Alhindawi worked in research labs and became an international aid and human rights worker in East Timor, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. A little over two years ago she became a full-time photojournalist working in many of the same locations. Documenting the bears was a welcome respite from photographing in conflict zones.

“I’m so happy to have done this,” she said. “There were so many times I wanted to put my camera down, put on a bearskin and join them. It’s really magical, like going into a fairy tale.”

You can follow Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi on Instagram and Twitter.

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