One of the prettiest of Christmas customs is the Norwegian practice of giving, on Christmas Day, a dinner to the birds. On Christmas morning every gable, gateway, or barn-door, is decorated with a sheaf of corn fixed on the top of a tall pole, wherefrom it is intended that the birds should make their Christmas dinner. Even the peasants contrive to have a handful set by for this purpose, and what the birds do not eat on Christmas Day, remains for them to finish at their leisure during the winter. On New Year's Day in Norway, friends and acquaintances exchange calls and good wishes. In the corner of each reception-room is placed a little table, furnished all through the day with wine and cakes for the refreshment of the visitors; who talk, and compliment, and flirt, and sip wine, and nibble cake from house to house, with great perseverance. Between Christmas and Twelfth Day mummers are in season. They are called "Julebukker," or Christmas goblins. They invariably appear after dark, and in masks and fancy dresses. A host may therefore have to entertain in the course of the season, a Punch, Mephistopheles, Charlemagne, Number, Nip, Gustavus, Oberon, and whole companies of other fanciful and historic characters; but, as their antics are performed in silence, they are not particularly cheerful company. CHRISTMAS IN RUSSIA. With Christmas Eve begins the festive season known in Russia as _Svyatki_ or _Svyatuie Vechera_ (Holy Evenings), which lasts till the Epiphany. The numerous sportive ceremonies which are associated with it resemble, in many respects, those with which we are familiar, but they are rendered specially interesting and valuable by the relics of the past which they have been the means of preserving--the fragments of ritual song which refer to the ancient paganism of the land, the time-honoured customs which originally belonged to the feasts with which the heathen Slavs greeted each year the return of the sun. On Christmas Eve commences the singing of the songs called _Kolyadki_, a word, generally supposed to be akin to _Kalendae_, though reference is made in some of them to a mysterious being, apparently a solar goddess, named Kolyada. "Kolyada, Kolyada! Kolyada has come. We wandered about, we sought holy Kolyada in all the courtyards," commences one of these old songs, for many a year, no doubt, solemnly sung by the young people who used in olden times to escort from homestead to homestead a sledge in which sat a girl dressed in white, who represented the benignant goddess. Nowadays these songs have in many places fallen into disuse, or are kept up only by the children who go from house to house, to congratulate the inhabitants on the arrival of Christmas, and to wish them a prosperous New Year. In every home, says one of these archaic poems, are three inner chambers. In one is the bright moon, in another the red sun, in a third many stars. The bright moon--that is the master of the house; the red sun--that is