study. To suggest a religious origin for each would be
going too far, for merely economic considerations must have had much to
do with the matter, but it is very probable that in some cases they are
relics of sacrifices or sacraments.

The pig is a favourite food animal at Christmas in other countries than
our own, a fact probably connected with sacrificial customs. In Denmark
and Sweden a pig's head was one of the principal articles of the great
Christmas Eve repast.{16} In Germany it is a fairly widespread custom to
kill a pig shortly before Christmas and partake of it on Christmas Day;
its entrails and bones and the straw which has been in contact with it
are supposed to have fertilizing powers.{17} In Roumania a pig is the
Christmas animal _par excellence_,{18} in Russia pigs' trotters are a
favourite dish at the New Year,{19} and in every Servian house roast pig
is the principal Christmas dish.{20}

In Upper Bavaria there is a custom which almost certainly has at its root
a sacrifice: a number of poor people club together at Christmas-time and
buy a cow to be killed and eaten at a common feast.{21}

More doubtful is the sacrificial origin of the dishes of certain |287|
special kinds of fish on Christmas Eve. In Saxony and Thuringia herring
salad is eaten--he who bakes it will have money all the year--and in many
parts of Germany and also in Styria carp is then consumed.{22} Round
Erce in Brittany the family dish is cod.{23} In Italy the _cenone_ or
great supper held on Christmas Eve has fish for its animal basis, and
stewed eels are particularly popular. It is to be remembered that in
Catholic countries the Vigil of the Nativity is a fast, and meat is not
allowed upon it; this alone would account for the prominence of fish on
Christmas Eve.

We have already come across peculiar cakes eaten at various pre-Christmas
festivals; at Christmas itself special kinds of bread, pastry, and cakes
abound on the Continent, and in some cases at least may have a religious
origin.

In France various sorts of cakes and loaves are known at the season of
_Noel_. In Berry on Christmas morning loaves called _cornaboeux_, made in
the shape of horns or a crescent, are distributed to the poor. In
Lorraine people give one another _cognes_ or _cogneux_, a kind of pastry
in the shape of two crescents back to back, or else long and narrow in
form and with a crescent at either end. In some parts of France the
_cornaboeux_ are known as _ho