Todaustragen:The Ritual Expulsion of Death at Mid-Lent—History and Scholarship

Abstract

WE are at present accustomed to celebrating the advent of the New Year on January 1. However, this was not always so. Indeed, it was only in 1691 that Pope Innocent XII dedicated January 1st as New Year's Day,' it being the Feast of Saint Silvester who served as Pope from 314 to 335, January 1st having been consecrated as his feast-day in 813.2 Currently, January 1st is still referred to in Germany as Silvester. The designation of January 1st as marking the New Year is, therefore, arbitrary and of relatively recent origin. Until the time of the Caesars, Hermann Usener contends, the Romans began their year with March, as did the Slavic peoples.3 According to Jacob Grimm, the Slavs and the Germanic peoples divided the year into two seasons: Winter and Summer.4 Time, as Edmund Leach noted, is a conceptual device facilitating the ordering of experience, there existing various models of time which are projected onto the experiential continuum by the bearers thereof. While the passage of time may be conceived of as