РІЗДВЯНІ ПОВІР’Я, ЗВИЧАЇ ТА ОБРЯДИ ВОЛИНЯН, ПОВ’ЯЗАНІ З УЯВЛЕННЯМИ ПРО ПОМЕРЛИХ

Abstract

The article provides the historic and ethnographic characteristics of the traditional demonologic ideas about the dead represented in Christmas beliefs, customs and rites of the Volhynians. On the basis of the ethnographic sources of the 19th and 20th cc. and the materials of modern field research, the customary and ceremonial and magically ritualistic methods of reverence, flatter and protection against the undesirable influence of the dead have been determined, parallels between the demonologic, Christmas and funerary traditions have been traced, and the local peculiarity and the current state of the studied phenomena in the territory of the ethnographic Volhynia have been explored. The article determines that mythopoetic ideas about the departed, as well as related customs and rituals are an integral part of the Christmas tradition of the Volhynians, a separate layer of numerous and unique means of ceremonial magic, particularly of the calendar and household prohibitions, ritual practices with ceremonial dishes, festive attributes and magical talismans (inviting the dead to the festive meal on the Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve or Twelfth-night, commemoration of the departed, including suicides, symbolic sacrifice of ceremonial dishes, prohibitions on eating outside one’s home, doing general labor activities within a specific calendar period, using metal objects (knife, ax a.o.) during Christmas holidays, as well as other apotropaions, etc.). Many of these phenomena have all-Ukrainian, nonethnic equivalents and typological parallels in the various cycles of the calendar ethnic tradition, in the family, agrarian, and building rituals. The materials of modern field research have been introduced into scientific circulation, which allowed to trace the local features, the level of conservation of the ancient beliefs and customs, their current state within the peculiar ethnographic region of Volhynia insufficiently studied in the ethnographic literature. The article determines that further ethnological study of Christmas beliefs about the dead, as well as related customs and rites, is scientifically promising for the holistic and in-depth study of the entire field of folk rituals.