Servia is one of the countries in which the old, old customs have lasted longest. They began in the times when men looked forward longingly to “the days in which the sun, having gone far enough into the snowy plains of the winter, turns back toward the green fields of summer.” The celebration begins on the day before Christmas, which the older Servian songs call “the day of the old Badnyak.” No one seems to know who Badnyak was; but some have believed that the fast-day was first kept in honor of the old sun-god, who was thought of as grown weak and faint, and as giving place to a younger. For on the next day was the feast of “the little God,” the new sun who was to bring summer back again. Nowadays, the name is given to logs cut for the Christmas fire. Every Servian boy is up before daylight on the day before Christmas, for he, of course, must be on hand when the strongest young men of the family start out with a cart and a pair of oxen to cut a young oak tree and bring it home. Upon the chosen tree they throw a handful of wheat with the greeting, “Happy Badnyi Day to you!” Then they begin to cut it very carefully, timing the strokes of the axes and placing them so that the tree shall fall directly toward the rising sun, and at the exact moment when its red ball begins to show at the edge of the world. If by any mischance, or a stroke of the axe in the wrong place, the tree falls toward the west, there will be great distress, for this is thought to mean that very bad luck will follow the family through all the coming year. If the tree should fall in the right direction but catch in the branches of another, the good fortune of the family will only be delayed for a while. The small boy’s part is to watch very closely where the first chip falls, for it is most important to carry home that first oak chip. The trunk of the tree is trimmed and cut into two or three logs, of which one is a foot or more longer than the others. They are then dragged to the house, but are not taken inside until sunset; in the meantime they stand in the courtyard on either side the door. The house mother leaves her work as they are brought home to break a flat cake of purest wheat flour upon the longest log, while the little girls sing special songs. But soon she goes back to her work, for there is a deal to be done before sunset; the women are making Christmas cakes in the shape of lambs and chickens, and most often of little pigs with blunt-pointed noses and curly tails. For the pig belongs to a Servian Christmas as much as turkey does to an American Thanksgiving. Long ago the pagan Servians used to sacrifice a pig to the sun-god on the day of the old Badnyak; and to this day you will not find one Servian house in which “roast pig” is not the chief dish of the Christmas dinner. While the women bake, the men prepare the pig for the next day’s roasting. The boy who so carefully brought home that first oak chip put it at once into a wooden bowl, and his little