In the peasant calendar, the main winter holiday was Christmas time, which lasted two weeks, starting on Christmas Eve. Christmas time ended on the day of Baptism. It was a kind of transition from the old to the new year. At this time, various holy rites were performed. These rites have their roots in ancient times and are associated with paganism. The nature of this holiday was influenced by Christianity.
The main holidays of Christmas time are Christmas, St. Basil's Day or New Year's Eve and Baptism. It was on these days in the evening that the holy rites were performed. In every house, ritual food was necessarily prepared for the souls of the dead, and after dinner it was left on the table. For frost, treats were placed on the threshold or window. It was believed that without this, in the new year, a good harvest would not grow.
Sacred traditions were not limited to feeding the souls of deceased ancestors. For example, a Christmas rite of the Glory of Christ was performed at Christmas. This ceremony was associated with ensuring a high harvest in the coming year. For the same purpose, on New Year's Day, carols went from house to house and sang congratulatory songs to the owners. For this it was supposed to generously bestow carols.
The sacred rites were performed mainly by young men and women. Christmas time in general was considered a youth holiday, since adults, three days after the holiday, were already returning to their daily work, and youth free from work continued to have fun. At this time, the formation of marriage couples was actively going on.
In all evenings, except Christmas Eve, youth games were held, where boys and girls looked closely at each other. Even at that time, it was customary for young girls to visit their friends or relatives who lived in large villages, where they attracted the attention of guys not only with bright outfits, but also with how they knew how to dance, sing or just talk. But at the same time, the girls had to behave modestly.
Some rituals for Christmas time were associated with fortune telling. In each house, in the evenings, they divined for the harvest, and the girls divined for the groom. Guys, though rare, also wondered, trying to find out about the upcoming wedding. Usually bride weddings took place on the last laziness of the Christmas time, after which the time for weddings came. All these events turned the holy days into a very emotional action. The Russian people associated the onset of the new year with the birth of the sun and believed that it was at Christmas time that the fate of each person and nature was formed for the next year. It was believed that with the help of fortune-telling it was possible not only to predict fate, but also, if the forecast was unfavorable, change it. For example, this was done during the preparation of the ritual cereal for the New Year. The birth of the new year among Russian people was associated with the transition from darkness to light, so all the holy rites were performed in the dark - in the evening or at night.
Christmas time was divided into holy and terrible evenings. Holy evenings lasted from Christmas to New Year. That is, until Vasiliev’s day, and terrible ones - from New Year’s Eve to Baptism. It was believed that on terrible evenings an unclean force was born , it flies out of the pipe and creates revelry and atrocities. Therefore, during this terrible time, various protective rites were performed. Protecting not only people and livestock, but also the entire economy.
Trying to eradicate paganism in 1649, the Russian Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich issued decrees prohibiting fortune telling, but he could not completely eradicate these traditions. In order to know their fate and perform the rites, people tightly pulled the curtains and locked themselves in a hut or bathhouse, or even went into the woods. Some sacred traditions turned out to be so tenacious that they have survived to this day.
So the question again arises: is Orthodoxy Christianity or is it still paganism?