But on the score of meaning both alternatives are alike unconvincing. Polites indeed cites one or two popular traditions in which the Callicantzari are represented as wearing wooden or iron shoes--wherewith no doubt the better to kick and to trample their victims; and such footgear might, I suppose, be described ironically as ‘nice boots.’ But to find in this occasional trait the origin of the word Callicantzaros[590] appears to me a counsel of despair. Nor does the other alternative commend itself to me any more. It is of course a widely accepted belief--and one by the way which contradicts the traditions just mentioned--that the Callicantzari have feet like those of an ass or a goat. But in describing such a creature no one surely would be likely to say that it had hoofs ‘instead of boots’--‘instead of feet’ would be the natural and reasonable expression. To suppose that the Callicantzari (or rather, to use the hypothetical form, the καλικοτσάγγαροι) are so named because their boot-maker provides them with hoofs instead of detachable foot-gear, is little short of ludicrous. But though neither of the proposed derivations will, I think, win much acceptance, the historical evidence which Polites adduces in support of his views forms a valuable contribution to the study of this subject. The inferences which he draws therefrom may not be correct; but the material which he has collected is of high interest. Singling out of the many traditions concerning the Callicantzari the widely, and perhaps universally, prevalent belief that their activities are confined to the Twelve Days between Christmas and Epiphany, he argues that if we can discover the origin of this limitation, we shall be in a fair way to discover also whence came the conception of the Callicantzari themselves. Accordingly he traces the history of winter festivals in Greece, starting from the period in which the Greeks, in deference to their Roman masters, adopted the festivals known as the Saturnalia, the Brumalia, and the Kalándae (for so the celebration of the Kalends of January was called by the Greeks) in place of their own old festivals such as the Kronia and some of the festivals of Dionysus. The change however was more one of name than of method of observance[591]. The pagan orgies which marked these festal days were strongly denounced by the Fathers of the Church from the very earliest times. In the first century of our era, Timothy, bishop of Ephesus, met with his martyrdom in an attempt to suppress such a festival. At the end of the fourth century S. John Chrysostom and, after him, Asterios, bishop of Amasea, loudly inveighed against the celebration of the Kalandae. At the end of the seventh century the sixth Oecumenical Council of the Church promulgated a canon forbidding all these pagan winter-festivals. But still in the twelfth century, as Balsamon testifies[592], the old abuses continued unabated; and there are local survivals of such festivals at the present day.