Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in Traditional Christian Culture

Abstract

Approximately two hundred examples of processions, customs, rituals, beliefs and divinations listed in this paper have an exceptional social and aesthetical significance. Around one hundred and forty of these examples have been recorded in the last ten years in more than a hundred locations in the Republic of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Children’s morning congratulatory processions have a sympathetic and panspermic character. Rituals connected to the Yule log: decorating it with green shrubs, the ritual of gobinjanje, all have an apotropaic and panspermic character. Fast, glorijans; sprinkling with holy water are of religious character. Sheep blessing has an apotropaic and religious character. Nowadays, Christmas Eve carol singing has assumed a humanitarian character. Some of the above rituals, customs, beliefs and divinations are of a pre-Christian origin. Some of the processions, rituals and customs have been preserved until our time, some have been modified and some have remained only in the memory of elderly people.