The development of religious custom and belief in Europe is a matter of
such vast complexity that I cannot in a book of this kind attempt more
than the roughest outline of the probable origins of the observances,
purely pagan or half-Christianized, clustering round Christmas. It is
difficult, in the present state of knowledge, to discern clearly the
contributions of different peoples to the traditional customs of Europe,
and even, in many cases, to say whether a given custom is "Aryan" or
pre-Aryan. The proportion of the Aryan military aristocracy to the
peoples whom they conquered was not uniform in all countries, and |164|
probably was often small. While the families of the conquerors succeeded
in imposing their languages, it by no means necessarily follows that the
folk-practices of countries now Aryan in speech came entirely or even
chiefly from Aryan sources. Religious tradition has a marvellous power of
persistence, and it must be remembered that the lands conquered by men of
Aryan speech had been previously occupied for immense periods.{5}
Similarly, in countries like our own, which have been successively
invaded by Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, and Normans, it is often
extraordinarily hard to say even to what _national_ source a given custom
should be assigned.

It is but tentatively and with uncertain hands that scholars are trying
to separate the racial strains in the folk-traditions of Europe, and here
I can hardly do more than point out three formative elements in Christian
customs: the ecclesiastical, the classical (Greek and Roman), and the
barbarian, taking the last broadly and without a minute racial analysis.
So far, indeed, as ritual, apart from mythology, is concerned, there
seems to be a broad common ground of tradition among the Aryan-speaking
peoples. How far this is due to a common derivation we need not here
attempt to decide. The folk-lore of the whole world, it is to be noted,
"reveals for the same stages of civilization a wonderful uniformity and
homogeneity.... This uniformity is not, however, due to necessary
uniformity of origin, but to a great extent to the fact that it
represents the state of equilibrium arrived at between minds at a certain
level and their environment."{6}

The scientific study of primitive religion is still almost in its
infancy, and a large amount of conjecture must necessarily enter into any
explanations of popular ritual that can be offered. In attempting to