king Hakon the Good of Norway
(940-63).{28}

[83] It is only right to mention here Professor G. Bilfinger's monograph
"Das germanische Julfest" (Stuttgart, 1901), where it is maintained
that the only festivals from which the Christmas customs of the
Teutonic peoples have sprung are the January Kalends of the Roman
Empire and the Christian feast of the Nativity. Bilfinger holds
that there is no evidence either of a November beginning-of-winter
festival or of an ancient Teutonic midwinter feast. Bilfinger's is
the most systematic of existing treatises on Christmas origins, but
the considerations brought forward in Tille's "Yule and Christmas"
in favour of the November festival are not lightly to be set aside,
and while recognizing that its celebration must be regarded rather
as a probable hypothesis than an established fact, I shall here
follow in general the suggestions of Tille and try to show the
contributions of this northern New Year feast to Christmas customs.

[84] Accounts of such maskings are to be found in innumerable books of
travel. In _Folk-Lore_, June 30, 1911, Professor Edward Westermarck
gives a particularly full and interesting description of Moroccan
customs of this sort. He describes at length various masquerades in
the skins and heads of beasts, accompanied often by the dressing-up
of men as women and by gross obscenities.

[85] Another suggested explanation connects the change of clothes with
rites of initiation at the passage from boyhood to manhood.
"Manhood, among primitive peoples, seems to be envisaged as ceasing
to be a woman.... Man is born of woman, reared of woman. When he
passes to manhood, he ceases to be a woman-thing, and begins to
exercise functions other and alien. That moment is one naturally of
extreme peril; he at once emphasizes it and disguises it. He wears
woman's clothes." From initiation rites, according to this theory,
the custom spread to other occasions when it was desirable to
"change the luck."

[86] According to Sir John Rhys, in the Isle of Man _Hollantide_
(November 1, Old Style, therefore November 12) is still to-day the
beginning of a new year. But the ordinary calendar is gaining
ground, and some of the associations of the old New Year's Day are
being transferred to Janua