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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).
In addition, in pre-Christian times, such events required a certain sacrifice. In ancient times, when human sacrifices had already been abandoned, it was necessary to sacrifice what was valuable to God. And cattle were valuable at that time. And thus we proceed to the rite of "driving the goat". That is, cattle were sacrificed, which was then replaced by baking cookies in the form of Christmas cattle. Why in ancient times carolers were associated with the afterlife At this time, the border between the worlds becomes so thin that there is a transition between them. It is also connected with honoring the dead. On the one hand, the dead were treated with tremendous respect and honor, as if they welcomed this transition. On the other hand, it is a little scary. We had to somehow protect ourselves from them.
After that, such dramas unfolded. My father took kutyu - a symbol of honoring ancestors. And with the kutyu, he could first go to the cattle, the prognostic function - to have healthy cattle, for the future harvest. Then he would go out into the yard, in some regions he would put kutyu into his mouth, and in some - with a spoon of kutyu he would go out into the yard and call Frost. But not "grandfather Frost", that Soviet one, but Frost - as an element that has a completely negative connotation: "Frost, Frost, come to my place to eat, and if you don't go now, then don't go ever: no for rye, no for wheat, not for rich arable land." That is, a kind of countermeasure so that this Frost does not freeze anything. And the children at that time, as if they were afraid of that Frost, hid somewhere under the table, and in general, when they hid under the table, they had to "becat" and "mecat" - to imitate the cattle that should be herded next year.