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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).
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.

And after that, the Christmas meal began. At the same time, it was necessarily taken into account that the souls of deceased ancestors can come to the house on this day. So many utensils were placed on the table, but it was not possible to use sharp objects, taking into account those people who died this year, or, for example, as the war is now, taking into account those who are currently on the road, somewhere far away. Later, this tradition began to change. Each new religion tries to either destroy the previous one, or level it, or conquer it. We are seeing a transformation. Instead of the Sun, we have the Star of Bethlehem. Accordingly, carolers already go with Zora, not with Sonechka. Instead of pre-Christian carols, we have Christian carols. The Saints appear, the same kutya and twelve dishes appear, symbolizing initially the number of months, and later the number of Saints.

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).