Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan

have considered under the heading of Sacrifice and Sacrament. A festival of the family?-that is, perhaps, what Christmas most prominently is to-day: it is the grea

rth, and had to be propitiated with libations, while elsewhere the souls of the dead were thought to return to their old homes at the New Year, and meat and drink had to be set out for them. The Church's establishment of All Souls' Day did much to keep practices of tendance of the departed to early November, but sometimes these have wandered

food was an offering to supernatural beings, the guardians and representatives of the dead.?{49} Burchardus of Worms in the early eleventh century says definitely that in his time tables were laid with food and drink and three knives for "those three Sisters whom the ancients in their folly called Parcae."?{50} The Parcae were apparently identified with the three "weird" Sisters known in England and in other Teutonic

g of the New Year. Sometimes the beings so driven away are definitely the spirits of the departed. An appalling racket and a great flare of torches are common features of these expulsions, and we shall meet with similar customs during the Christmas season. Such purifications, according to Dr. Frazer, are