The first visit on Christmas Day is considered important—we may compare this with “first-footing” in the British Isles on January 1—and in order that the right sort of person may come, some one is specially chosen to be the so-called polaznik. No outsider but this polaznik may enter a house on Christmas Day, where the rites are strictly observed. He appears in the early morning, carries corn in his glove and shakes it out before the threshold with the words, “Christ is born,” whereupon some member of the household sprinkles him with corn in return, answering, “He is born indeed.” Afterwards the polaznik goes to the fire and makes sparks fly from the remains of the badnjak, at the same time uttering a wish for the good luck of the house-father and his household and farm. Money and sometimes an orange are then placed on the badnjak. It is not allowed to burn quite away; the last remains of the fire are extinguished and the embers are laid between the branches of young fruit-trees to promote their growth.[{2}]
How shall we interpret these practices? Mannhardt regards the log as an embodiment of the vegetation-spirit, and its burning [253]as an efficacious symbol of sunshine, meant to secure the genial vitalizing influence of the sun during the coming year.[{3}] It is, however, possible to connect it with a different circle of ideas and to see in its burning the solemn annual rekindling of the sacred hearth-fire, the centre of the family life and the dwelling-place of the ancestors. Primitive peoples in many parts of the world are accustomed to associate fire with human generation,[{4}] and it is a general belief among Aryan and other peoples that ancestral spirits have their seat in the hearth. In Russia, for instance, “in the Nijegorod Government it is still forbidden to break up the smouldering faggots in a stove, because to do so might cause the ancestors to fall through into hell. And when a Russian family moves from one house to another, the fire is conveyed to the new one, where it is received with the words, ‘Welcome, grandfather, to the new home!’”[{5}]
Sir Arthur Evans in three articles in Macmillan's Magazine for 1881[{6}] gave a minute account of the Christmas customs of the Serbian highlanders above Risano, who practise the log-rites with elaborate ceremonial, and explained them as connected in one way or other with ancestor-worship, though the people themselves attach a Christian meaning to many of them. He pointed to the following facts as showing that the Serbian Christmas is at bottom a feast of the dead:—(1) It is said on Christmas Eve, “To-night Earth is blended with Paradise” [Raj, the abode of the dead among the heathen Slavs]. (2) There is talk of unchristened folk beneath the threshold wailing “for a wax-light and offerings to be brought them; when that is done they lie still enough”—here there may be a modified survival of the idea that ancestral spirits dwell beneath the doorway. (3) The food must on no account be cleared away after the Christmas meal, but is left for three days, apparently for the house-spirits. (4) Blessings are invoked upon the “Absent Ones,” which seems to mean the departed, and (5) a toast is drunk and a bread-cake broken in memory of “the Patron Namegiver of all house-fathers,” ostensibly Christ but perhaps originally the founder of the family. Some of these customs resemble those we have noted on All Souls’ Eve and—in Scandinavia—on Christmas Eve; other parallels we shall meet [254]with later. Among the Slav races the old organization of the family under an elective house-elder and holding things in common has been faithfully preserved, and we might expect to find among the remote Serbian highlanders specially clear traces of the old religion of the hearth. One remarkable point noted by Sir Arthur Evans was that in the Crivoscian cottage where he stayed the fire-irons, the table, and the stools were removed to an obscure corner before the logs were brought in and the Christmas rites began—an indication apparently of the extreme antiquity of the celebration, as dating from a time when such implements were unknown.[{7}]
If we take the view that ancestral spirits are the centre of the badnjak observances, we may regard the libations upon the fire as intended for their benefit. On the sun and vegetation hypothesis, however, the libations would be meant to secure, by homoeopathic magic, that sunshine should alternate with the rain necessary for the welfare of plants.[99][{8}] The fertilizing powers possessed by the sparks and ashes of the Christmas log appear frequently in folk-lore, and may be explained either by the connection of fire with human generation already noted, or, on the other theory, by the burning log being a sort of sacrament of sunshine. It is not perhaps necessary to exclude the idea of the log's connection with the vegetation-spirit even on the ancestral cult hypothesis, for the tree which furnished the fuel may have been regarded as the source of the life of the race.[{9}] The Serbian rites certainly suggest very strongly some sort of veneration for the log itself as well as for the fire that it feeds.
We may now return to western Europe. In France the Christmas log or souche de Noël is common in the less modernized places, particularly in the south. In Dauphiné it is called chalendal, [255]in Provence calignaou (from Kalendae, of course) or tréfoir, in Orne tréfouet. On Christmas Eve in Provence the whole family goes solemnly out to bring in the log. A carol meanwhile is sung praying for blessings on the house, that the women may bear children, the nanny-goats kids, and the ewes lambs, that corn and flour may abound, and the cask be full of wine. Then the youngest child in the family pours wine on the log in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The log is then thrown upon the fire, and the charcoal is kept all the year and used as a remedy for various ills.[{11}]
Another account is given in his Memoirs by Frédéric Mistral, the Provençal poet. On Christmas Eve everyone, he says, speaking of his boyhood, sallied forth to fetch the Yule log, which had to be cut from a fruit-tree:—
“Walking in line we bore it home, headed by the oldest at one end, and I, the last born, bringing up the rear. Three times we made the tour of the kitchen, then, arrived at the flagstones of the hearth, my father solemnly poured over the log a glass of wine, with the dedicatory words:
‘Joy, joy. May God shower joy upon us, my dear children. Christmas brings us all good things. God give us grace to see the New Year, and if we do not increase in numbers may we at all events not decrease.’
In chorus we responded:
‘Joy, joy, joy!’ and lifted the log on the fire dogs. Then as the first flame leapt up my father would cross himself, saying, ‘Burn the log, O fire,’ and with that we all sat down to the table.”[{12}]
In some places the tréfoir or tison de Noël is burnt every evening during the Thirteen Nights. If put under the bed its charcoal protects the house all the year round from lightning; contact with it preserves people from chilblains and animals from various diseases; mixed with fodder it makes cows calve; its brands thrown into the soil keep the corn healthy. In Périgord the portion which has not been burnt is used to form part of a plough, and is believed to make the seed prosper; women also keep some fragments until Epiphany that their poultry may thrive.[{13}] In [256]Brittany the tison is a protection against lightning and its ashes are put in wells to keep the water good.[{14}]
In northern Italy also the ceppo or log is (or was) known—the Piedmontese call it suc—and in Tuscany Christmas is called after it Festa di Ceppo. In the Val di Chiana on Christmas Eve the family gathers, a great log is set on the fire, the children are blindfolded and have to beat it with tongs, and an Ave Maria del Ceppo is sung.[{15}] Under the name in Lombardy of zocco, in Tuscany of ciocco, di Natale, the Yule log was in olden times common in Italian cities; the custom can there be traced back to the eleventh century. A little book probably printed in Milan at the end of the fifteenth century gives minute particulars of the ritual observed, and we learn that on Christmas Eve the father, or the head of the household, used to call all the family together and with great devotion, in the name of the Holy Trinity, take the log and place it on the fire. Juniper was put under it, and on the top money was placed, afterwards to be given to the servants. Wine in abundance was poured three times on the fire when the head of the house had drunk and given drink to all present. It was an old Italian custom to preserve the ashes of the zocco as a protection against hail. A modern superstition is to keep some splinters of the wood and burn them in the fires made for the benefit of silkworms; so burnt, they are supposed to keep ills away from the creatures.[{16}]
In many parts of Germany Yule log customs can be traced. In Hesse and Westphalia, for instance, it was the custom on Christmas Eve or Day to lay a large block of wood on the fire and, as soon as it was charred a little, to take it off and preserve it. When a storm threatened, it was kindled again as a protection against lightning. It was called the Christbrand.[{17}] In Thuringia a Christklotz (Christ log) is put on the fire before people go to bed, so that it may burn all through the night. Its remains are kept to protect the house from fire and ill-luck. In parts of Thuringia and in Mecklenburg, Pomerania, East Prussia, Saxony, and Bohemia, the fire is kept up all night on Christmas or New Year's Eve, and the ashes are used to rid cattle of vermin and protect plants and fruit-trees from insects, while in the country between the Sieg [257]and Lahn the powdered ashes of an oaken log are strewn during the Thirteen Nights on the fields, to increase their fertility.[{18}] In Sweden, too, some form of Yule log was known,[{19}] and in Greece, as we have seen, the burning of a log is still supposed to be a protection against Kallikantzaroi.