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Carols and Christmas carols were extremely popular ritual songs among the people. Carols are sung from December 25 to January 7. They were timed to Christmas. And donations - before the New Year (according to the old style - January 14).
All this is sung about in carols, which were known long before the beginning of Christian times in Ukraine, it is also found in ordinary rituals, such as: twelve wormwood, twelve Christmas Eve dishes, calling for a dinner of frost, a wolf, a black storm and evil winds, grandfather on penance, hay on the table. All these movements, actions and words, which at first glance have no meaning in a person's life, blow on the heart of each of us with the charm of the native element and are a living balm for the soul that fills it with powerful strength.
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.