купыт кныджы дема мыгаылова гтмл

 

Митрополит Василий Липкивский так характеризовал колядки в рождественской проповеди "Значение колядок": Как хорошо в наших колядках сочетаются и останки этого еще языческого времени и величественный свет веры Христовой на нашей чисто народной, национальной почве! Колядки, это, безусловно, чисто народное произведение, и по содержанию, и по пению, но вместе с развитием народной жизни на содержание колядок оказывались разные влияния, и больше всего, безусловно, со стороны духовной науки. Во времена развития наших украинских братств и братских школ, бурсаки этих школ и их учителя, которые в ту пору добывали себе жизнь пением кантов и колядок по праздникам, внесли много школьной науки в колядки…

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.

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).