hich in time came to be looked upon as affording
assistance to the powers of growth in their conflict with the powers of
blight," and to have had many features in common with the Teutonic feast
at the same season, for instance animal sacrifice, commemoration of the
dead, and omens and charms for the New Year.{27}

There is some reason also to believe that the New Year |173| festival
of the Slavs took place in the autumn and that its usages have been
transferred to the feast of the Nativity.{29} A description based on
contemporary documents cannot be given of these barbarian festivals; we
have, rather, to reconstruct them from survivals in popular custom. At
the close of this book, when such relics have been studied, we may have
gained some idea of what went on upon these pre-Christian holy-days. It
is the Teutonic customs that have been most fully recorded and discussed
by scholars, and these will loom largest in our review; at the same time
Celtic and Slav practices will be considered, and we shall find that they
often closely resemble those current in Teutonic lands.

The customs of the old New Year feasts have frequently wandered from
their original November date, and to this fact we owe whatever elements
of northern paganism are to be found in Christmas. Some practices seem to
have been put forward to Michaelmas; one side of the festivals, the cult
of the dead, is represented especially by All Saints' and All Souls' days
(November 1 and 2). St. Martin's Day (November 11) probably marks as
nearly as possible the old Teutonic date, and is still in Germany an
important folk-feast attended by many customs derived from the
beginning-of-winter festival. Other practices are found strewn over
various holy-days between Martinmas and Epiphany, and concentrated above
all on the Church's feast of the Nativity and the Roman New Year's Day,
January 1, both of which had naturally great power of attraction.{30}

The progress of agriculture, as Dr. Tille points out,{31} tended to
destroy the mid-November celebration. In the Carolingian period an
improvement took place in the cultivation of meadows, and the increased
quantity of hay made it possible to keep the animals fattening in stall,
instead of slaughtering them as soon as the pastures were closed. Thus
the killing-time, with its festivities, became later and later. St.
Andrew's Day (November 30) and St. Nicholas's (December 6) may mark
stages in its progress into the winter. I