The Church and Superstition--Nature of Pagan Survivals--Racial Origins--Roman Festivals of the _Saturnalia_ and Kalends--Was there a Teutonic Midwinter Festival?--The Teutonic, Celtic, and Slav New Year--Customs attracted to Christmas or January 1--The Winter Cycle of Festivals--_Rationale_ of Festival Ritual: (_a_) Sacrifice and Sacrament, (_b_) the Cult of the Dead, (_c_) Omens and Charms for the New Year--Compromise in the Later Middle Ages--The Puritans and Christmas--Decay of Old Traditions. [Illustration: NEW YEAR MUMMERS IN MANCHURIA. An Asiatic example of animal masks.] We have now to leave the commemoration of the Nativity of Christ, and to turn to the other side of Christmas--its many traditional observances which, though sometimes coloured by Christianity, have nothing to do with the Birth of the Redeemer. This class of customs has often, especially in the first millennium of our era, been the object of condemnations by ecclesiastics, and represents the old paganism which Christianity failed to extinguish. The Church has played a double part, a part of sheer antagonism, forcing heathen customs into the shade, into a more or less surreptitious and unprogressive life, and a part of adaptation, baptizing them into Christ, giving them a Christian name and interpretation, and often modifying their form. The general effect of Christianity upon pagan usages is well suggested by Dr. Karl Pearson:-- "What the missionary could he repressed, the more as his church grew in strength; what he could not repress he adopted or simply left unregarded.... What the missionary tried to repress became mediaeval witchcraft; what he judiciously disregarded survives to this |162| day in peasant weddings and in the folk-festivals at the great changes of season."{1} We find then many pagan practices concealed beneath a superficial Christianity--often under the mantle of some saint--but side by side with these are many usages never Christianized even in appearance, and obviously identical with heathen customs against which the Church thundered in the days of her youth. Grown old and tolerant--except of novelties--she has long since ceased to attack them, and they have themselves mostly lost all definite religious meaning. As the old pagan faith decayed, they tended to become in a literal sense "superstition," something standing over, like shells from which the living occupant has gone. They are now often mere "survivals" in the technical folk-lore sense, pieces of custom separated from the beliefs that once gave them meaning, performed only because in a vague sort of way they are supposed to bring good luck. In many cases those who practise them would be quite unable to explain how or why they work for good.