мемберс мемберс вовк_07 2902

 

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).

According to another legend, the Christmas tree was introduced into use by Martin Luther, who was walking through the forest at Christmas and saw a star shining above the Christmas tree, which seemed to him to be absolutely identical to the Star of Bethlehem, and he put that Christmas tree in his home and decorated it with a star. This is how the Christmas tree allegedly came to Western Europe. And later, in the 19th century, it was borrowed by France, later taken over by England, it even stood in the Windsor Palace, and later German immigrants who moved to America also brought a Christmas tree. Initially, when the Christmas tree appeared, it was decorated with fruits, apples, for example, which symbolize the same Original Sin of Adam and Eve.