Some tendency was shown by the Church not merely to set up Christmas as a rival to the pagan winter feasts, but also to substitute it for the Kalends of January as the beginning of the year. But the innovation never affected the civil year, and was not maintained even by ecclesiastical writers with any consistency, for even they prefer in many cases a year dating from the Annunciation, or more rarely from Easter. The so-called Annunciation style found favour even for many civil purposes in Great Britain, and was not finally abandoned until 1753[858]. But although Christmas cannot be said to have ever become a popular New Year’s day, yet its festal importance and its propinquity to January 1 naturally led to a result undesired and possibly undreamt of by its founders, namely, the further transference to it of many of the long-suffering Germano-Keltic folk-customs, which had already travelled under Roman influence from the middle of November to the beginning of January[859]. Already in the sixth century it had become necessary to forbid the abuses which had gathered around the celebration of Christmas eve[860]; and the Christmas customs of to-day, even where their name does not testify to their original connexion with the Kalends[861], are in a large number of cases, so far of course as they are not simply ecclesiastical, merely doublets of those of the New Year. What is true of Christmas is true also of Epiphany or Twelfth night; and the history of the other modern festivals of the winter cycle is closely parallel. The old Germanic New Year’s day on November 11 became the day of St. Martin, a fourth-century bishop of Tours, and the _pervigiliae_ of St. Martin, like those of the Nativity itself, already caused a scandal in the sixth century[862]. The observances of the deferred days of slaughter clustered round the feasts of St. Andrew on November 30, and more especially St. Nicholas on December 6. The _Todtenfest_, which had strayed to the beginning of November, was continued in the feasts of All Saints or Hallowmas, the French _Toussaint_, on November 1, and its charitable supplement of All Souls, on November 2. That which had strayed still further to the time of harvest became the _Gemeinwoche_ or week-wake, and ultimately St. Michael and All Angels. Nor is this all. Very similar customs attached themselves to the minor feasts of the _Dodecahemeron_, St. Stephen’s, St. John the Evangelist’s, Innocents’ days, to the numerous dedication wakes that fell on days, such as St. Luke’s[863], in autumn or early winter, or to the miscellaneous feasts closely approaching the Christmas season, St. Clement’s, St. Catherine’s, St. Thomas’s, with which indeed in many localities that season is popularly supposed to begin[864]. Nor was this process sensibly affected by the establishment in the sixth century of the _ieiunium_ known as Advent, which stretched for a _Quadragesima_, or period of forty days, from Martinmas onwards.