So far this study has concerned itself, on the one hand with the general character of the peasant festivals, on the other with the special history of such of these as fall within the summer cycle of the agricultural year, from ploughing to harvest. The remaining chapters will approach the corresponding festivals, centring around Christmas, of winter. These present a somewhat more difficult problem, partly because their elements are not quite so plainly agricultural, partly because of the remarkable dislocations which the development and clash of civilizations have brought about. It must, I think, be taken as established that the Germano-Keltic tribes had no primitive mid-winter feast, corresponding directly to the modern Christmas[792]. They had no solstitial feast, for they knew nothing of the solstices. And although they had a winter feast of the dead, belonging rather to the domestic than to the elemental side of cult, this probably fell not at the middle, but at the beginning of the season. It was an aspect in the great feast with which not the winter only but the Germano-Keltic year began. This took place when the advance of snow and frost drove the warriors back from foray and the cattle from the pastures. The scarcity of fodder made the stall-feeding of the whole herd an impossibility, and there was therefore an economic reason for a great slaughtering. This in its turn led to a great banquet on the fresh meat, and to a great sacrifice, accompanied with the usual perambulations, water-rites and fire-rites which sacrifice to the deities of field and flock entailed[793]. The vegetation spirit would again be abroad, no longer, as in spring or summer, in the form of flowers and fresh green boughs, but in that of the last sheaf or ‘kern-baby’ saved from harvest, or in that of such evergreens or rarer blossoms as might chance to brave the snows. The particular ‘intention’ of the festival would be to secure the bounty of the divine powers for the coming year, and a natural superstition would find omens for the whole period in the events of the initial day. The feast, however, would be domestic, as well as seasonal. The fire on the hearth was made ‘new,’ and beside it the fathers, resting from the toils of war, or herding or tillage, held jollification with their children. Nor were the dead forgotten. _Minni_ were drunk in honour of ancestors and ancestral deities; and a share of the banquet was laid out for such of these as might be expected, in the whirl of the wintry storm, to revisit the familiar house-place.