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How beautifully our carols combine the remnants of this still pagan time and the majestic light of Christ's faith on our purely folk, national soil! Carols are, of course, a purely folk work, both in terms of content and singing, but along with the development of folk life, various influences were exerted on the content of carols, and most of all, of course, from the side of spiritual science. During the development of our Ukrainian fraternities and fraternal schools, the bursakas of these schools and their teachers, who at that time made a living by singing cantos and carols on holidays, contributed a lot of school science to carols...

In fact, Ukrainians were clearly not primitive a thousand years ago or at the time of the Trypil culture, perhaps on the contrary, it was calendar-ritual creativity that was the source from which our ancestors drew inspiration for highly skilled pottery, blacksmithing, writing Easter cards, etc. Christmas carols appeared in the calendar (which was then called Kol) in pagan times and are associated with the day of the winter solstice, which was called the holiday of Kolyada, or korotun. According to one of the legends, on this day the Sun eats the snake Korotun. In the waters of the Dnieper, the all-powerful goddess Kolyada gave birth to a new sun - little Bozhich. Pagans tried to protect the newborn. They chased away Corotun, who wanted to eat the new Sun, and then went from house to house to inform people about the birth of the new Sun.

Subsequently, with the introduction of the Christian religion as a state religion in Russia (the so-called "baptism of Russia"), the rite of caroling was adapted to the celebration of Christmas. Priests and monks created new religious carols with biblical images, which also gained great popularity among the people. Prominent composers undertook the processing and restoration of carols: Mykola Lysenko, Stanislav Lyudkevich, and others. In carols, according to tradition, all members of the family were honored: the master, the mistress, the boyfriend, the girlfriend. The caroling was combined with a corresponding theatrical performance, dances, and music. They caroled in groups, having previously distributed responsibilities: chieftain "birch", "star", "mihonosha" and "ryajeni". Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivskyi described Christmas carols as follows in his Christmas sermon "The Meaning of Christmas Carols":