emoration of the Nativity of Christ, and to
turn to the other side of Christmas--its many traditional observances
which, though sometimes coloured by Christianity, have nothing to do with
the Birth of the Redeemer. This class of customs has often, especially in
the first millennium of our era, been the object of condemnations by
ecclesiastics, and represents the old paganism which Christianity failed
to extinguish. The Church has played a double part, a part of sheer
antagonism, forcing heathen customs into the shade, into a more or less
surreptitious and unprogressive life, and a part of adaptation, baptizing
them into Christ, giving them a Christian name and interpretation, and
often modifying their form. The general effect of Christianity upon pagan
usages is well suggested by Dr. Karl Pearson:--

"What the missionary could he repressed, the more as his church grew
in strength; what he could not repress he adopted or simply left
unregarded.... What the missionary tried to repress became mediaeval
witchcraft; what he judiciously disregarded survives to this |162|
day in peasant weddings and in the folk-festivals at the great
changes of season."{1}

We find then many pagan practices concealed beneath a superficial
Christianity--often under the mantle of some saint--but side by side with
these are many usages never Christianized even in appearance, and
obviously identical with heathen customs against which the Church
thundered in the days of her youth. Grown old and tolerant--except of
novelties--she has long since ceased to attack them, and they have
themselves mostly lost all definite religious meaning. As the old pagan
faith decayed, they tended to become in a literal sense "superstition,"
something standing over, like shells from which the living occupant has
gone. They are now often mere "survivals" in the technical folk-lore
sense, pieces of custom separated from the beliefs that once gave them
meaning, performed only because in a vague sort of way they are supposed
to bring good luck. In many cases those who practise them would be quite
unable to explain how or why they work for good.

Mental inertia, the instinct to do and believe what has always been done
and believed, has sometimes preserved the animating faith as well as the
external form of these practices, but often all serious significance has
departed. What was once religious or magical ritual, upon the due
observance of which th