the Virgin or some other Christian figure. Possibly
the name _Modranicht_ (night of mothers), which Bede gives to Christmas
Eve,{51} may be connected with this practice.

Not remote, probably, in origin from a belief in "ghosts" is the driving
away of spirits that sometimes takes place about |182| Christmas-time.
Many peoples, as Dr. Frazer has shown, have an annual expulsion of
goblins, ghosts, devils, witches, and evil influences, commonly at the
end of the Old or beginning of the New Year. Sometimes the beings so
driven away are definitely the spirits of the departed. An appalling
racket and a great flare of torches are common features of these
expulsions, and we shall meet with similar customs during the Christmas
season. Such purifications, according to Dr. Frazer, are often preceded
or followed by periods of licence, for when the burden of evil is about
to be, or has just been, removed, it is felt that a little temporary
freedom from moral restraints may be allowed with impunity.{52} Hence
possibly, in part, the licence which has often attended the Christmas
season.

III. OMENS AND CHARMS FOR THE NEW YEAR.

Customs of augury are to be met with at various dates, which may mark the
gradual shifting of the New Year festival from early November to January
1, while actual charms to secure prosperity are commonest at Christmas
itself or at the modern New Year. Magical rather than religious in
character, they are attempts to discover or influence the future by a
sort of crude scientific method based on supposed analogies. Beneath the
charms lie the primitive ideas that like produces like and that things
which have once been in contact continue to act upon one another after
they are separated in space.{53} The same ideas obviously underlie many
of the sacramental practices alluded to a few pages back, and these are
often of the nature of charms. Probably, too, among New Year charms
should be included such institutions as the bonfires on Hallowe'en in
Celtic countries, on Guy Fawkes Day in England, and at Martinmas in
Germany, for it would seem that they are intended to secure by imitation
a due supply of sunshine.{54} The principle that "well begun is well
ended"--or, as the Germans have it, "_Anfang gut, alles gut_"--is
fundamental in New Year practices: hence the custom of giving presents as
auguries of wealth during the coming year; hence perhaps partly the heavy
eating and drinking--a kind of charm to ensure abund