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Why carolers dress up as animals, foreigners and otherworldly creatures According to the idea of ancient people, the other world is, as it were, this world turned upside down. And accordingly, the representatives of that world are the same as us, but a little different. And accordingly, the carolers changed their clothes according to categories - "alien", otherworldly. It could not be a person, but an animal, that's how those animal images appeared in groups of carolers. It could be "strangers" by category - foreigner, that's how we have, for example, "German". These may not be people, but in general – demonic beings, so the carolers wrapped their hands with straw, stood on stilts or, conversely, squatted down, spoke in very deep, low voices, or, on the contrary, very squeaky.
From the beginning, carolers symbolized the dead who followed the sun, and kutya was a symbol of honoring ancestors. The head of the department of folkloristics of the Institute of Philology of the Kyiv National University named after T. Shevchenko, associate professor Olesya Naumovska, told about this on the air of Radio Kultura. She also told why carolers, according to tradition, change clothes, and when New Year's trees appeared in homes.
The group of winter calendar songs consists of carols and Christmas songs. These are majestic songs of Ukrainian farmers, related to the Proto-Slavic cult of the Sun. The ancestors of Ukrainians celebrated three phases of the sun - spring equinox, summer and winter solstice. The New Year began for the ancient Slavs from the vernal equinox (as, after all, in other European nations). Only later, the celebration of the beginning of the new year was moved to the time of the winter solstice (somewhere from the 14th century). There is a hypothesis that the very name of the holiday - "carol" - and the songs - "carols" comes from the name of the New Year in Ancient Rome (Calendae lanuarie), which indicates close contacts of Ukrainian-Slavic culture with Greco-Roman in pre-Christian times. In Ukrainian folklore, a peculiar "memory" of the spring New Year's ritual is the spring theme of many carols and Christmas carols. For example, F. Koless believes that the authentic name of the winter majestic songs in Ukrainian territory was actually "carols". Already in the 19th century, significant differences between carols and Christmas carols in terms of subject matter actually disappeared (V. Hnatiuk).
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