[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 January 1, the Roman date. "In Wales this must have been decidedly helped by the influence of Roman rule and Roman ideas; but even there the adjuncts of the Winter Calends have never been wholly transferred to the Calends of January."{4} [87] In Burne and Jackson's "Shropshire Folk-Lore" (p. 305 f.) there are details about cakes and other doles given to the poor at funerals. These probably had the same origin as the November "soul-cakes." [88] Cf. pp. 191-2 and 235-6 of this volume.