HOLIDAYS WITH A CRIMINAL BACKGROUND
According to Oleg Loginov.
January 6 – Yuletide – Slavic answer to Halloween
Yuletide is a Slavic folk holiday complex of the winter calendar period, consisting of twelve holidays «from the star to the water», that is, from the appearance of the first star on Christmas Eve to the Epiphany consecration of water. It lasts from the night of January 7 to the night of January 19.
P. Kaverznev. «Mummers (bear, guide grandfather, old woman, goat)»
On the Internet, they write about this holiday either boring for religious reasons or sweetly based on personal fantasies. For example, they write fairy-tale stories, as if the Russian tsars dressed up in simple clothes on Christmas Eve and went around prisons distributing food to prisoners. Perhaps because now this holiday cannot be beautifully taught, it is not celebrated. But they say it used to be celebrated interestingly. With caroling, mummery, ritual outrages of youth, fortune-telling on the betrothed and various rituals.
The peculiarity of this holiday was that it was celebrated in the so-called time «without the cross». That is, Christ has already been born, but has not yet been baptized. And this period is considered a favorite of evil spirits. Especially its representatives, who are called Yuletide demons. The most curious character among them is Shilikun.
If you see a man the size of a fist, with a pointed head and without heels, like a devil, on Christmas Eve, then you know – this is him. And do not think that if he is so small, then you can not be afraid of him. During the Yuletide period, the shilikuns break through the ice with their sharp heads to get out of the water to the ground. Try to break through the ice with a crowbar, and you will realize how strong this evil is. And since they like to act not alone, but in gangs, they are seriously to be feared. People who went out into the night without a cross around their necks, and even when drunk, are grabbed by shilikuns with a red-hot hook and dragged to the nearest pond to drown in an ice hole.
It is good that now there is no need to rinse laundry on the river in the cold. They say that in ancient times, for this underwear, water devils Kulyashi and dragged women into the icy water.
Young girls engaged in fortune-telling are attacked by scary and hairy Yuletide girls. They say that the best remedy against them, as against witches, is a chalk circle. And if they broke through this barrier, tear the beads from the neck. The Yuletide girls will slide on them, and you let’s run away.
In general, you can make a show on Christmas Eve no worse than on Halloween, there would be a desire.
*Texts from Wikipedia and other Internet resources were used.
*Translated using an electronic dictionary. The original text in Russian and much more on the criminal topic can be selected on the main page of the site — http://crimerecords.info/
