About New Year! =)

In the early Celts, spruce was considered the abode of the forest spirit, demanding bloody sacrifices — the entrails of people and animals, which the Druids regularly hung on the branches of the tree. When the strengthened Christian church forbade sacrifices, the peoples of Europe replaced the internal organs with wooden balls, which later became glass, and the guts with cloth and paper garlands.

As for Santa Claus, he was descended from an ancient and evil Celtic deity, the Great Elder of the North, the ruler of ice cold and snowstorm. He went home with a canvas bag, but did not give out gifts, but collected sacrifices that he had not given during the year. The visit of the Elder with the bag did not bode well: as a rule, after his departure, only icy corpses remained in the house. In order to protect the village from the terrible visit, the Druids brought a common sacrifice to the fierce deity - in frost they stripped and tied a young virgin to the tree. Perhaps it was her frozen, covered with hoarfrost corpse and became the prototype of a cheerful Snow Maiden, accompanying Santa Claus ...

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www.turist.ru/article/12/01/2007/50363