тгреадс сва 3 1025 бадджес

 

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).
Christmas carols are the oldest folklore genre. They preserve the memory of the old tribal era and are associated with the winter turning of the sun into summer, which was called the holiday of Kolyada. It was celebrated on December 25 (old style), when the night was the longest. Nature seemed to freeze at this time. It was believed that the sun was eaten by the evil Korochun - a dark Slavic deity. The goddess of the sky Kolyada was giving birth to a new sun, a little Bozhich.

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.

From the beginning, these groups were all male, given that this ritual involves contact with death. Accordingly, women did not participate in it. We can already see how children and women carol. In fact, only men could do it. But, considering that this holiday is combined with the sun, the groups could not walk around the village chaotically. They followed the sun, and if it was a mountainous area, for example, the Carpathians, then they walked from below in a circle, climbing and going around each house. If the carolers did not enter a house, it means that a dead person's foot could be there, and this was a bad sign and they were very offended.