*YULETUDES *

The echoes of ancient customs are prevalent in the Northern villages. Yuletide is one of them, the most stable, having held out until the postwar years.

Have you ever had an inexplicable burning desire to go around dressed like a mummer in life? If you have not experienced this, then it is difficult to understand the whole meaning and originality of Yuletide.

The Christmas week falls on frosty wintertime when the economic affairs of the peasant kept to a mandatory minimum of care for the cattle. But, of course, the hard-working family was not sitting idly by even in winter, but at Yuletide, you could leave everything and go where you want, do what you want. Naturally, this wasn't recorded, but moral rights belonged to children, adolescents, young adults, more mature people, even the elderly.

The essence of Yuletide, which came down to our times, was mainly walking in costumes and masks, divination and the so-called fun. People's element, who could not bear the monotony of the ordinary, apparently, not in vain, selected these three festive customs.

Those who have read Gogol and spent at least pre-war childhood in the Northern village must see remarkable similarities between the festive spirit with the atmosphere, as described in the novel "The Night before Christmas." 

 In this sense, everything in "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka» of N.V. Gogol is entirely consistent with the spirit of our Northern folklife. It would seem all is different: the language, songs, nature and manners. But something important, unexplained is familiar; the relationship is striking. N.V. Gogol had never been in any Kadnikove or Kholmogory villages, had not heard of our Northern blizzards and songs, and had not seen our dances and fests. But the Northern storytellers still recognize themselves in Red-headed Panko; the mischief of Ukrainian lads is entirely similar to the Yuletide pranks. Drunken Kalenik personage still roams the countryside of Vologda province...

Fun during the Yuletide seemed to let out accumulated negative emotions that have, saying scientifically, a centrifugal direction. Apparently, it played the role of a kind of "vaccination" that prevents an actual "disease." After tasting the properties and actions of a bit of evil (the Christmas pranks), men lost interest in the great evil; they acquired moral immunity and immunity to severe infection. That's why jokes were usually doing small kids, adolescents and adult males, who for whatever reason have not achieved moral maturity in time, that is, in childhood.

A band of pranksters went at midnight to the villages, and all that was not nailed became the object of mischief. Thus, left on the street, wood-sled necessarily was put on its hind legs, on the road, and in the morning, the owner of the wood-sled had no sympathy. Rugs, dried by frost on the poles, served as material for plugging chimneys; bucket, left at the well, was used for carrying water and freezing the gates.

More serious indulgence was the destruction of firewood piles and bath heaters. Of course, no one would have dared to do this; it is considered a crime, but during Yuletide, it was forgiven, the owners were mad, but not seriously.

All kinds of divination particularly fascinated children, adolescents, women, girls and even adults, many married women. It is difficult also to list all types of divination. In Yuletide, oddly, everything took on special meaning; nothing was accidental. People would pay attention to minor detail. Any item turned into an omen, in a precursor of something definite. Everything was remembered and interpreted that no one would pay attention after the Christmas holidays.

Results of predictions rarely coincided with the subsequent reality. But the actual course of divination touched even people who did not believe in anything, responding to human needs that are obscure for us. However, the power of suggestion and auto-suggestion reached during fortunetelling and divination such proportions that people began to spontaneously seek to ensure that was predicted. Then a "prediction" indeed often came to pass.

Of course, mummers cannot be considered a random detail of people's everyday life. It was omnipresent. Few people in childhood and adolescence were not among mummers, and even in adulthood, most continued this ritual.

There was something strange to our modern view, aesthetic need, to turn yourself inside out. Perhaps with the help of anti-image / (festive mask, unnatural attire, fur coat turned inside out), our ancestors were freed from the power of hideous. Approximately the same need is felt and stupid limericks which have no rhyme, in poetic miniatures with a sense of meaninglessness and direct, deliberate absurdity.

You could feel in villages mild anxiety long before Christmas. Soon came the first day of Yuletide, on the street appeared first small mummers, in the evening dressed up teens, and in the evening at the games, conversations and dances were more spirits of performance.

We should ponder the word "performance.»

Performance is delivered prepared in advance; pretend to be someone else. This need probably is a need to periodically be transfigured, get rid of your own ego, see yourself from aside, and perhaps even get a respite from this "I" and turn at least to the opposite for a short time. It is not accidental the girls liked to dress up in men's clothes and boys - in the women's clothes. The comic effect is achieved in such cases by the discrepancy of attire and behaviour (gestures, mannerisms).

But most likely, dressing up, for example, like the devil, man, disassociated himself from everything terrible, concentrating in its new "twisted" form of all devilish stuff to get rid of it, dropping the dress. Thus, there is a peculiar, like a pagan "purification."

It was necessary to identify this evil, impersonate and imagine it, which happened during Christmas, to get rid of evil spirits.

People dressed up as per their own imagination, using various means. So, turned inside out, shrilling or sheepskin vest and trousers were sometimes half of the battle. Face smeared with soot, homemade locks made out of flax, inserts, cutout from turnip teeth, horns, masks turned a mummer into a terrible evil. People dressed up as a corpse, a gypsy, a soldier, a witch, etc. It was allowed to portray a real person known to all specific features.

A mask (lichina) was a necessary and ancient festive accessory. A variety of masks was made mainly from birch bark. On a piece of birch bark were cut out holes for eyes, nose and mouth, sewn bark nose, beard, eyebrows, mustache, rosy cheeks beet. The most colourful masks were stored until the following Christmas holidays.

In the evening, a crowd of mummers was going around some of the houses in the village. Burst into the house, frightening the children, the mummers immediately began to dance and buffoon.

The audience's task is to recognize who is dancing under one or another guise. An exposed mummer lost the purpose and took off the mask.

The beauty of walking mummers was that anybody could dress up. The shyest person boldly stamped his feet; the most mediocre dancer could dance, it was allowed to all.

Children and teenagers were waiting for the Christmas week, as indeed they were waiting for other events: carnival, drifting of the ice, the first snow, holiday, etc.

For Christmas time, people were preparing in advance. Married and youngish women went as mummers to other villages, proving that it was considered objectionable and even quite indecent in regular times.

Indulgence, masks, divination and fortunetelling continued over the Christmas week. You do not feel that harmony, order, and sequence inherent in other more prolonged folk customs at Christmas time. Of course, everybody tried to entertain the others as best as possible, but this 'disorder' was a stylistic feature of the Christmas holidays.

Inside of the very festive custom was born and evolved in its pure form, one of folk art genres - the kind of drama.

A folk drama cannot be viewed outside the Yuletide tradition; it is entirely out of the masquerade, though contrary to the spirit of the custom. Indeed, in each of the mummers is hidden the actor, but there is the actor, there is inevitable the viewers. But in the old days, acting was not significant; a mummer stopped being a mummer when his identity became known. At the same time, any person could dress up when he pleased.

In acting, in the artistic process were involved all. The people were not divided into two specific camps: the audience and performers, the creators of art and consumers.

With the division of creativity, we first meet in such actions as "Boat," "King Maximilian," "Kobylyak and burial," "Man and hatter."

Despite their artistic identity, these acts called "people's dramas" pale with the same tradition that was created them by science.