vans in three articles in _Macmillan's Magazine_ for 1881{6}
gave a minute account of the Christmas customs of the Serbian highlanders
above Risano, who practise the log-rites with elaborate ceremonial, and
explained them as connected in one way or other with ancestor-worship,
though the people themselves attach a Christian meaning to many of them.
He pointed to the following facts as showing that the Serbian Christmas
is at bottom a feast of the dead:--(1) It is said on Christmas Eve,
"To-night Earth is blended with Paradise" [_Raj_, the abode of the dead
among the heathen Slavs]. (2) There is talk of unchristened folk beneath
the threshold wailing "for a wax-light and offerings to be brought them;
when that is done they lie still enough"--here there may be a modified
survival of the idea that ancestral spirits dwell beneath the doorway.
(3) The food must on no account be cleared away after the Christmas meal,
but is left for three days, apparently for the house-spirits. (4)
Blessings are invoked upon the "Absent Ones," which seems to mean the
departed, and (5) a toast is drunk and a bread-cake broken in memory of
"the Patron Namegiver of all house-fathers," ostensibly Christ but
perhaps originally the founder of the family. Some of these customs
resemble those we have noted on All Souls' Eve and--in Scandinavia--on
Christmas Eve; other parallels we shall meet |254| with later. Among
the Slav races the old organization of the family under an elective
house-elder and holding things in common has been faithfully preserved,
and we might expect to find among the remote Serbian highlanders
specially clear traces of the old religion of the hearth. One remarkable
point noted by Sir Arthur Evans was that in the Crivoscian cottage where
he stayed the fire-irons, the table, and the stools were removed to an
obscure corner before the logs were brought in and the Christmas rites
began--an indication apparently of the extreme antiquity of the
celebration, as dating from a time when such implements were unknown.{7}

If we take the view that ancestral spirits are the centre of the
_badnjak_ observances, we may regard the libations upon the fire as
intended for their benefit. On the sun and vegetation hypothesis,
however, the libations would be meant to secure, by homoeopathic magic,
that sunshine should alternate with the rain necessary for the welfare of
plants.[99]{8} The fertilizing powers possessed by the sparks and ashes
of the C