CHRISTMAS IN HERZEGOVINA

By - ZDENKO REICH

IT is snowing. The empty streets of Mostar, the capital of old Herzegovina, seem darker than usual. Now and then s dog barks at the back of a courtyard ; and it keeps on snowing. Then, all at once, a whole streetful of young folk : "May you be happy on Christ's birthday !" As they go from house to :house, the children seek little Presents that are never refused_on this one day of the year, and they do not suspect that they are keeping alive one of the old traditions that are so rapidly dis- appearing..

. I remember. very well how old Yoven, who died last year, used to celebrate Christmas. He did it exactly as he had learned to when he was a boy, as though he were a kind of priest specially appointed by Heaven to preserve a sacred tradition. On Christmas eve, well before sun-rise, the young girls would leave his house for the forest at the edge of the village to pick long streamers of ivy. As they came home with their arms loaded with foliage, they were careful to put their right foot in front as they stepped into the house. At the same time they called oaf a. merry : "May you be happy on_ Christ's birthday !.'" - It takes all morning to decorate the house and the stables With the green festoons. What is left over is not thrown away. It is carried to the fields and. planted, along, with a Shoot of oak, in the 'middle of each of the plots of land. to be sown in the spring.

Then,. after, dinner, they begin to make a big cake called a " navratnak." It is a curious affair,, consisting of a huge dish of dough covered with ivy seeds. On it is inscribed what to the peasant seems the idea, the spirit of his household. A little ball of dough .squats in the middle to represent the master himself. Around him are as many little balls as there are members Of the family, arranged in a .constellation like the sun and its planets. The egts, the cows, the calves, the sheep, the swine, the chickens, all the, animals of the barnyard are there, represented each by its little mark scratched on the pastry. One large mark, to the side and very special, stands for the dog, for he protects . the house. On the opposite side curves the spiral form . of a snake, which personifies the vegetation that slowly work its way, out of the ground, like the snake .itself, when the first warm rays of the spring sun strike the earth.. The bringing in of the cattle in the evening is indeed a fine. ceremonial,. Two men, each holding a lighted candle, stand at the door of the house so that the animak must pass between them. The older of the two, when the cattle have passed into the stable, calls out : ".Good night !. wish you a pleasant night and much happiness on Christmas day I " The peasant's wife waits inside the door of her house, holding in her hands the . huge cake she has just finished making. She thanks each of the men and, as she returns their good wishes, holds out to them the cake, slowly turning it about. The older bites the cake on three sides, but takes care not to touch it with -his hands._ The pieces he slips inside his clothing. Tomorrow he will mix them with the salt he gives the cattle.

The realleast does not begin until three o'clock in the morning.. The barnyard is dark. Lined up, there are three oak trunks that have been brought in on the fifteenth, of November, the day the fasting before Christmas began. The trunks have been cut with much care, for the whole village went out with the men to fetch them in from. the forest... I -remember one of these processions quite.near- Mostar.. It was strange to hear, in the middle of Novem- bertthe -Christmas carols ;

"Rohe ! Throe sisters has Christmas ; Ono he sends to make the sheep bear, Another he sends to harvest the grain, And the third to gather the grapes. . ." &c.

The master gets up and goes into the barnyard. It is a moment of suspense. The ritual is beginning.

Immediately every iron utensil in the household is replaced by a similar object made of wood. Even the language becomes different. All words referring to demons or harmful animals are strictly forbidden in the barnyard. They are replaced by the word "happy."

No longer does the peasant say : "I hear the wolf howl- ing " ; he says : "I hear the happy is happy." Sentences become very puzzling.

The master goes back toward the house carrying one of the oak trunks. Then a man conies up to him carry- _ ing a glassful of grain : "May God bring you happi- ness, health and joy ! " he calls out as he pours the contents of the glass over the wood. This is repeated each time the master brings in a new log. The supreme moment is when the three tree trunks are set on fire, lying ominously in the fireplace. As they burst into flames one of the men rushes outdoors and fires a gun.

It seems to have a hundred echoes as the neighbours, too, announce that their. logs. have begun to burn. The master sits down on the end of the log nearest him, stuffs the end ofthe index finger of his right hand into his ear, and makes the sacred incantation : " O0000j !. How much happiness the dark of the night is bringing, us ! May it be still more when the light of dawn comes ! May it bring us the best of health and the greatest of joy ! "

The rites of Christmas Eve are almost finished. After " the housewife has rubbed one of the logs with butter "so thM the cows will give rich milk next year, the ceremonies are over. Normal words take up their place in the vocabulary again, and breathing becomes freer. .

The rest of the morning there is nothing but songs. The " gousla," a primitive instrument with a single string, is handed about from man to man. Each tries to outdo the. others; and old Yoven takes his turn along with the rest. His voice is slow and cracked and drawly, as if the hard work that has bent his back has broken his voice too. But he. sings all the same. There are marvellous tales of encounters with the Turks that spurt through the imagination with the brilliance of Eastern arabesques.

And there is much. of the great .prince Marko, who rides through the legends on an enormous horse, putting whole armies of the Infidels to flight. Everyone listens breath- lessly as No-yen weaves a tapestry of legendary feats about Marko against the monotonous background of the " gousla."

The sun comes up. It is Christmas day, the day of omens, the day that foretells all the year to come. Every- one is dressed in his best. The men go about in white shirts that fall to their hips, brightly embroidered and belted at the waist, and pantaloons of white linen. The. women are wearing skirts adorned with rows of lace, and aprons. and bodices worked with gold thread, to represent various plants.. Once the morning meal is over, the master of, the house takes a nut from a basket. that has been placed on the table and crushes it between his fingers. If the kernel, is good, the next year's harvests will be good ; if the. kernel is bad, beware !

A shot, fired in. the.harnyard, makes known to all that the great divination that precedes the main meal of the day .is about .to begin. F,ach member. of the household takes a lighted candle and begins to pray. He prays until the master comes to collect the candles and bind them with a piece of red silk ribbon. The candles are stuck into a vessel of rye and wheat. During dinner every eye is anxiously fixed on the burning tapers. If, as the flame burns down the wax, the wick bends toward the fields, the harvest is bound to be good. But if the wick curves and rolls up, the master may prepare for the worst, unless the mystical and incomprehensible words he begins to mumble persuade the wick to correct itself.

The afternoon is devoted to visits. But these are not regular family or neighbourly visits. To pay a call on Christmas day places on the caller a heavy respon- sibility for all that may happen in a family during the corning year. Every visitor is greeted with suspicion, and such ill fortune as may happen later is readily traced to him.

The visitor, " polaznik," comes with two pistols and a large knife stuck in his belt. He carries a pitcher of wine in which he drops an apple and an orange entirely covered with pieces of money. When he gets in front of the house he is to visit, he fires the gun and calls out : " O0000, father, Christ is born ! " A chorus of voices answers him inside the house : "He is born, He is born ! " The visitor enters the house and goes directly to the room where the remains of the logs burned the night before are lying. He goes up to the middle one, pours the wine on it, and puts the apple and orange in the niche specially cut for them.

• All these rites that I have just described are deeply rooted in the daily preoccupations of the peasant. His entire activity is devoted to the tilling of the soil. His eyes are at all times turned toward his fields. Fertility becomes for hini something very concrete, the cause of the growth of his crops and beasts. It is not difficult for him to consider fertility as an independent force, a force that is- nototional. The peasant thinks logically enough, even if he does think very differently from us who hesitate to assign supernatural reasons.. It is exactly through an idea, fundamentally logical but not based on those obser- vations that make it possible for us to explain the world by principles grounded in science, that the peasant can believe the process of growth to be the -result of a force at the same time supernatural and concrete. This force is embodied in everything. A forest, for example, contains much more of this force causing growth than an ordinary field. For the tree-trunks are larger and stronger than mere stalks.

• ' That part of the ritual which concerns the tree- trunks represents the transference of the fertility of the forests to the fields. The tree-trunks are specially chosen agents that transmit the force to the objects that they come in contact with tut these carriers of the mysterious power bring dangers along with them. As soon as they are brought in, on the night before Christmas, the very room in which they lie becomes enchanted. Common speech is no longer fitting. Iron objects, since they are made of the same metal as the axe, must be replaced by wooden objects, for the tote is the enemy of the tree. And the visitor who arrives on Christmas day, trembling for the fate of those he has come to greet, goes immediately to the room where the remains of the trunks are burning. It is to thern that he makes his presents. . . .

It is dark now. The children have scattered in various directions. The old Christmas, the Christmas of Yoven, has gone from Mostar, perhaps forever: The pine tree, covered with candles and stars and fine candy angels, has taken the place of the oak thinks.' Some old' Men can remember, though, that other Christmas of their youth, and they tell vague and uneredited stories Of it. And they, too, repeat the cry that is still passing from house to house ; "May you be happy on Christ's birthday."