Motanka

"Motanka", elaborately decorated but always faceless cloth doll was once a common feature in every Ukrainian peasant home. These dolls weren't just toys. They were magic talismans...

The name "motanka" comes from the word "motaty" (to wind) ie to make a knotted doll out of fabric, without using a needle and scissors. The winding of the doll was to be carried out only clockwise...

The fact that the doll had to be wound clockwise (sunwise) is very important as this direction was by our ancestors considered "positive, natural" and the opposite direction was considered "negative, unnatural"...

The Gaels in Ireland/Scotland were particularly obsessed with this. I talked about the importance of "sunwise" (clockwise) motion, movement in Gaelic rituals in my post "Sunwise". 

The reason why dolls had no faces, is because people believed that giving the doll a face could tie a person's soul to it. Which indicates that these dolls are symbolic depictions of the female ancestors, all the way down to the Mother Earth.

The common characteristic linking all these female ancestors is fertility, ability to give birth, without which there would be no one here today to make "Motanka" dolls...

Remember my post "Palaeolithic Venus figurines" in which I asked: Were European Palaeolithic "Venus" figurines made faceless and with super exaggerated sexual characteristics to depict an "idea" of fertility?

And remember my post "The faceless one", in which I talked about the faceless Persephone? 

Persephone, the anthropomorphised female ancestral fertility and grain fertility, was also sometimes depicted with vailed face or with no face at all...Two statues from Cyrene, Libya...   

And do you remember my post "Bescherkind", about a living "Motanka" from Sorbian tradition?

A girl dressed as a faceless "bride", who brings presents (and good luck) to Sorbian families on last Wednesday before Christmas (originally probably on Winter Solstice day). 

Another confirmation that the doll was a depiction of (the fertility) of the female ancestors is the fact that the process of making "Motanka" dolls is called "kutannya" or swaddling as it is very similar to swaddling a baby.

And because of "Motanka" dolls like this cute one 🙂

And because: There are three main types of the "Motanka" dolls: a bride, a baby and a married woman.

A bride "Motanka" was made to help the girls get married. This doll was richly dressed because it symbolised the dowry of the bride and was supposed to attract a wealthy husband.

At birth of the child, a baby "Motanka" was made which looked like a swaddle baby. It was put in the cradle in order to protect the baby. It was also left in the cradle after the baby overgrew the cradle to protect the cradle until the next baby was born.

A (married) woman "Motanka" was made to help the woman with her marital duties, especially things linked to her own and the land (crops and animal) fertility. Coins, grains, wool were put in the doll.

Also, before the wedding the mother made the doll for the daughter, symbolically passing the female ancestral support and expectation down to the next generation.

All the above dolls were "guardian" dolls and had to be made "while thinking good, positive thoughts"...

But there were also "Motanka" dolls made ritually to get rid of (troubles, diseases). They were made while thinking about the badness they were supposed to represent, and then the dolls were burnt or drowned in water...

Interesting...Remember this: Slavs equated The Goddess of Death, Morana (mor=death) with The Old Hag, The Winter Earth, Marzana (marz=frost). She is ceremonially burned (warmed) or drowned (thawed) or both (to de sure to be sure 🙂) during Slavic spring festivals...

I talked about this in my posts: "Bride", "Bannock", "Gryla", "Party", "To kill a witch", "Baba's day", "Living stone"...

Finally, as I already said, originally, all the the "Motanka" dolls had white empty faces. But today, they usually have a cross across their white empty faces, most likely as symbol of "Christianisation" of this ancient magical artefact...

Grýla

This is Grýla, the Icelandic Christmas witch. She lives in a cave in Iceland’s hinterlands, from where she attacks nearby townships, snatches up misbehaving children, and turns them into delicious stew....

Grýla did not get connected to Christmas until around the early 19th c. when poems began to associate her with the holiday...

Prior to that, she was "really a personification of the winter and the darkness and the snow getting closer and taking over the land again. Not only did she represent winter, she was seen as actually controlling the landscape"...

This is very interesting. In Slavic languages, the word Baba today primarily means grandmother. But it also used to mean mother, midwife, and Mother Earth. I talked about this in my post about "Baba's day" which is the celebration of midwives from Bulgaria... 

As Mother Earth, Baba primarily meant winter earth, the time of complete domination of Earth over Sun in the Earth (Yin) - Sun (Yang) system which produces life. The time of the year dominated by Yin aspects (Dark, Cold, Wet). More about it in my post "Yin and Yang"...

What is interesting about this Icelandic legend is that it directly states that "Baba" (Grandmother) Grýla not only "brings cold and winter" but that she "shapes the landscape". She is Earth...Mother Earth...The same beliefs are found in the Balkans...

In the Balkans shepherds used to pray to stones and particularly rocky crags for good weather. These stones were known as Baba (Mother Earth) stones. Interestingly a lot of these stones are now incorporated into chapels dedicated to Mother Mary. I talked about this in my post "Shepherds chapels from Velebit"... 

In Slavic countries people performed megalithic (stone raising) rituals intended to manipulate weather. These were accompanied with prayers to Dabog, Sky Father, but the medium used was rock, body of Dajbaba, Earth Mother. I talked about these rituals in my post "Weather stones"...

The direct link between Mother Earth, Stone (rock), cold is particularly strong in the Balkans. In Serbia the word baba used to also mean stone, rock. Rocky mountain tops are often called Baba as are exposed outcrops of bedrock...Like this one from Slovenia...

In Croatian and Serbian folklore "baba" (Grandmother) is directly linked to winter, cold, damp:

baba (grandmother) - late snow which falls in spring

babura (grandmother) - hail, ice that falls from the sky

babura (grandmother) - dark sky with drizzle

baba (grandmother) - changeable weather at the beginning of March when snow is likely to fall

bаbini dni (grandmother's days) babini jаrci, kozlići (grandmother's goats) pozаjmenci (borrowed days), ukovi (noise, storm, wind) - cold stormy snowy days in March or April

baba Marta (grandmother Marta, March) - Month of March which can have very changeable weather with snow

babina nedelja (grandmother's week) - the last week in March

baba Korizma - lent, seven weeks of great spring fasting
baba Korizma - a man dressed as a woman representing winter during the Bele Poklade (lent) carnival 
bаbin kut, budžаk (grandmother's corner) - the north west part of the sky from which storms and cold weather come
babje, bablje, bа̏bаčko leto (grandmother's summer) - late hot days in the autumn, indian summer

In Polish folklore we find

babinmróz (grandmother's frost) - October frost

"baba chłóduna (grandmother cold) is sitting somewhere on an oak tree, incubating eggs, and until they hatch, the drought will continue" - when drought lasts too long

In the Polish Carpathians we find

"the baba (grandmother) is already frozen" - the mountain tops are covered with frost or the first snow

In Bulgarian folklore we find 

babin proso (grandmother's millet) - hailstone 

baba Marta (grandmother Marta, March) - a mythical figure who brings with her the end of the cold winter and the beginning of the spring. Celebrated on the March the 1st.

In Romania, where Serbs once lived in huge numbers, we find

babe (grandmothers) - first 9 days of March when snow can fall again

baba Dochia (grandmother Dochia) - an old woman who insults (teases) the month of March either by badmouthing Him or by going up to the mountain with a herd of sheep or goats (way before she should, in May). March then steals frosty days from February to punish her. See "babini jarci" (grandmother's goats) and "pozаjmenci" (borrowed days), both meaning "cold stormy snowy days in March or April" from Serbian folklore... 

Among Kashubians in the Carpathian mountians we find

old baba (grandmother) - rain

"the old baba (grandmother) went to dance" - when the weather suddenly changes and it starts to snow

The reason why Baba (Mother Earth) was identified with rocks is because everything above rocks, everything alive, plants, animals, humans... was seen as "what Mother Earth gave birth to"...

This is Babno polje (Grandmother's field), a valley in Slovenia. This is the coldest place in Slovenia...

Babinjača (Grandmother's place), Pešter (Sjenica). Pester is the largest plateau (1150m on 63km²) in the Balkan Peninsula and one of the largest in Europe. The area of Sjenica (Babinjača) is the place where the lowest temperatures in Serbia are recorded every winter...

Bjelašnica, Babin do (Grandmother's valley). The area experiences some of the lowest winter temperatures in Bosnia, down to -41 °C. Also known as Mokra gora (Wet mountain, forest)...

All of these places were called Baba's place deliberately because they were the coldest spots...

The Cold old hag, Winter Earth, gets transformed into Hot young maiden, Spring Earth, with the arrival of her future husband, young Sun. Just in time, as all the last year's wheat was used up. Milling grandmother into maiden, Slovenia...I talked about this in my post "Babji mlin"...

Baba (Old Hag, Winter Earth) is found all over Europe under different guises.

In Gaelic lands of Ireland and Scotland she is Cailleach...

In Italy she is Befana...

In the mountains of Central Europe she is Perchta to Germans or Peruehty to Slavs...

In the North of Germany and in Scandinavia she is "Mother Holle (Hulda) or "Old Mother Frost"

Mother Holle is very interesting indeed. Marija Gimbutas thought that Holle was originally an ancient Germanic supreme goddess who predated most of the Germanic pantheon. She was right about Holle being old Mother Goddess. Not right about her being in any way exclusively Germanic

Officially, the name is thought to originate from German "huld" (gracious, friendly, sympathetic, grateful), Middle High German "hulde", Old High German "huldī" (friendliness). Weird root for the name of the Old Hag, right?

Then we read this: The name "Hludana" is found in five Latin inscriptions: three from lower Rhine, one from Münstereifel, one from Beetgum, Frisia, all dating from 197 AD-235 AD. Many attempts have been made to interpret this name...How about "hladna" Slavic for she who is cold?

That would be the perfect root for The Old Hag Winter, right? But who would be speaking Slavic languages in parts of Germany occupied by Romans in the 2nd and 3rd century AD??? Well Slavs of course, but that completely contradicts the official history of Europe...

In Slavic countries she is Baba Marta. Normally this is believed to mean Grandmother March, as in month of March. But why would Slavs name the Old Hag Winter Earth using Roman month name, which by the way was in many Slavic lands the first month of Spring?

The original Slavic name for the Old Hag Winter Earth was Baba Mora, Baba Morana. Name Mora, Morana is based on the root "mor". This root is found in most Serbian words with diminishing, reducing, negative meaning...Morana was also Slavic goddess of death...

The word "mori" means "kills", so Morana is literally "She who kills". The word "mraz" (moroz) means "frost" so Marzanna is literally the frosty, the cold one. They both come from the same root "mor"...

And it is Morana (Morena, Marzanna) whose effigies are made at the beginning of every Spring, and 
are then burned or drowned (or both, to be sure to be sure 🙂). This is done to make sure winter doesn't return. Burning - warming of Mother Earth, Drowning - showing of Mother Earth

Gaels also used to ceremonially burn the Old Winter, Cailleach.

That Morana and Baba are one and the same can be seen from rituals preserved in South of Serbia and Bulgaria, performed during "Babinden" (Grandmother's day), the annual celebrations of "birth givers"...

In Bulgaria, the climactic moment of the day is the ritual bathing of the midwife in the river or a well. Actually ritual drowning.

This custom was until the 1980s preserved in the village of Dikanci, in Gora region in South of Serbia.

I will finish this post with this Roman mosaic depicting The Spirit of winter...

Dragon who stole rain

In the past, during spring droughts, Serbs used to go to mountain lakes and pray for rain on their shores "to a dragon living in the lake who swallowed the rain"...

Procession lead by a man holding a cross would walk around the lake, after which the cross was throwh into the lake...As a sacrifice to the dragon...

These kind of ritual prayers used to be organised in many mountains like Stars Vlah, Mokra, Vinik, Bjelasica...

Rain swallowing, drought causing dragon is a common theme in Slavic folklore...And when a hero kills such a dragon by cutting his head(s) off (the only way to kill a dragon by the way), "rivers (of fertility) flow from each of his necks"...

We even know the name of the dragon to whom Serbs prayed for rain. Jarilo, Slavic sun god, whose name means "The brightly burning one", "The scorcher". He represents the sun's heat...Sun's heat which is life bringing in spring and life destroying in summer...

His symbol is snake, also symbol of sun's heat, because snakes only come out during warm part of the year. I talked about the snake as the symbol of the sun's heat in my article "Enemy of the sun" and "Chthonic animal". During the hottest period of the year, summer, snake turns into dragon, fire breathing, drought causing monster...The scorcher...Jarilo...

That Dragon is directly linked to the sun, is the sun, can be seen from Serbian folklore where "Sun ray calls Dragon his brother" and where "Dragon marries Sun's sister"...

We know this because when spring droughts come, Serbs, both Christian and Muslim living on mountains Šara and Korab, used to come together on the lakeshore on St George's day, old Jarilo's day, and sacrifice a ram whose blood was let flow into the lake. For the dragon...Jarilo...

Sacrificing a lamb on St George's day was a must for every Serbian family. This was originally blood sacrifice to Jarilo, the Dragon. Even after Jarilo was Christianised into St George, and became the Dragon killer, Serbs continued with their annual sacrifices...

Summer, time of scorching heat, time of the dragon, starts in Taurus (bull of summer). And for Taurus to start, Aries (ram of spring) needs to end (die)...I talked about this in my post "Aries must die". 

In the lakeside ritual killing of rams during droughts, on St George's day, Serbs explicitly equated St George, Jarilo with the Dragon...

Christian and Muslim Serbs also sacrificed young girls at the lake under Trojan fortress on Pešter highland...I talked about this in my post "Water bull"...

"According to the local legends, there once was a lake below the peak. The lake was a home to a three headed (!) dragon, or a water bull...Every year the local people sacrificed a young girl to the monster, so that it would leave them in peace. One year, it was Serbian king's daughter's turn to be sacrificed. But at the last moment, a knight, St George, arrived, killed the monster and saved the girl.

Interestingly, at the bottom of the Trojan peak lies Djurdjevica well (St George's well). This well is holly to both Christians and Muslims who live in the area, and they gather around every year on St George's day, to celebrate the Saint's day together..."

This legend equates dragon with the bull, the symbol of summer. Bull is the symbol of summer because summer starts in Taurus, bull... 

Source for the lakeside rain rituals: "Srpski Mitoloski Recnik - Grupa Autora"

PS:

Long ago, drought hit Kingsteignton in Devon.

There was not even enough water to baptise a baby.

The villagers sacrificed a ram in the dry bed of a stream. Water burst forth.

Ever since, the good folk of Kingsteignton have roasted a ram at Whitsuntide amidst much revelling...

Blood red wine

In ancient Greece undiluted red wine was reserved exclusively for gods and was only used for libations. Drinking undiluted red wine was considered sacrilegious and in some cities was punishable by death...

Greeks also believed that blood was the favourite drink of the dead. The dead liked blood because blood is life and only through drinking blood could the dead obtain living consciousness. When Odysseus goes to the underworld to talk to the dead he first gives them sheep blood...

The red wine was the closest thing to blood, which is why eventually blood letting (blood libation) was replaced with the red wine libation...

In Serbia the ancestral cult, the cult of the dead, is at the core of all folk beliefs. Dead were believed to have power over the living and could decide the faith of their descendants. Basically all the dead were deified... Even the main pagan god of the Serbs, Dabog, Sun (Sky) god, was considered to be the progenitor of the Serbs, their original ancestor. He was also the god of the dead, the god of the underworld....So no wonder that in Serbia, during funerals, and during annual visits to the graves, undiluted red wine is poured on the graves of the dead. 

As a matter of fact, in the past, no feast could start without the dead being mentioned and some (originally) red wine, but now any spirit, been spilled on the ground "for the dead"...

As I said in my post "Thirst" Balkan Slavs believed that droughts were caused by "thirsty" ancestors, who were not given enough water through libations by their descendants. 

Destructive storms were also seen as the "wrath of the angry ancestors". In some parts of Serbia people believed that storms actually contained the demons of the restless dead. 

To protect the livelihood people would cut their fingers and point the bloody side to the clouds...

Why? Were they giving their own blood as the sacrifice to the dead to appease them?

Ancient Greeks in the same situation were lifting read scarves towards the cloud. This is again a replacement for the much older blood sacrifice for the dead which was unchanged preserved by Serbian peasants...

That Serbian peasants preserved this most archaic sacrificial ritual is not surprising at all. Blood sacrifices were a big thing in Serbian culture. Agricultural year started and ended with a blood sacrifice. A new house couldn't be built without a blood sacrifice. The end of the harvest was marked by a blood sacrifice...

More info about South Slavic blood sacrifices can be found in my post "Kurban"...

Thirst

In Serbia people believed that droughts could be caused by the angry thirsty ancestors who didn't receive their water libations..

Serbs, like many other people believed that what the dead miss the most in the other world is water and that they are always thirsty...

Babylonians and Germanic people believed that only those who died in battle would in the other world "always drink fresh water from a well" while everyone else was doomed to suffer eternal thirst

This is why in the ancestral cults it was always one of the most important duties to ensure that the dead have enough water.

Orphic mystery cult promised the followers lots o water in the other world and even gave them a secret formula which would help them to find it.

Muslims in the Balkans used to soak the grave after the burial and sometimes they used to bury their dead in a place hours away from the village if the village was located in a dry area.

In Serbia, on the place where the dead lied at home before burial,  people break the jug of water. A jug of water is also brought to the graveyard and is poured over the grave. At the funeral dinner some water is poured under the table...

In Serbia, for 40 days after the burial, the family of the deceased used to take water from their well to 40 different houses, different house each day, "for the soul"...

In Stip, Macedonia there is a curse  "May no one brings water for him for the other world"...

The belief in the Balkans was that if the dead are not given water, they will drink it from the clouds, and will cause drought. This is why Bosnian Muslims would during droughts throw stones in the air making sure they fall in a river, to bring the thirsty souls down from the clouds.

This is not a Muslim ritual, but a pagan Slavic ritual which Muslim Slavs from Bosnia preserved, with many other pagan beliefs and rituals. I talked about some of them in my post "Alidjun". 

The reason why stones were used in this magic ceremony is because it was believed that stones can tie the souls to themselves. I talked about this in my post "Tombstones".

In Southeastern Serbia people used to place bowls with water in the coffin, cause the dead are particularly thirsty during the 40 days after burial. 

This is a Bronze Age burial cist. Next to the body are two earthen bowls...

Were these bowls, which our Neolithic, Bronze age, Iron Age ancestors placed in graves, also originally full of water? 

Tombstones

Ancient tombstones on Morine, Bosnia

Are tombstones placed on top of the dead to "bind their souls" and stop them from wandering around and harming the living? 

Slavs used to place stones in, on and around graves to prevent the dead from rising up and escaping the body as a spirit and torment the living.

Sometimes the stones were placed in the person's mouth or on top of his body to "weigh his soul down".

Northwestern Poland, cemetery in the town of Kamien Pomorski. A person buried in one of the graves was pierced with a stake and a stone was placed in his mouth. Both ritual acts were performed to stop the dead from rising.

At Celakovice, about 30 kilometers north of Prague in the Czech Republic, fourteen "vampire" graves have been excavated, each with metal spikes driven through their bodies or heavy stones placed upon them. The graves are believed to date from the eleventh or twelfth century...

In three seventeenth-eighteenth century "vampire" graves were excavated at the cemetery in Drawsko, Poland. Two people were buried with iron sickles placed around their necks...

Whilst the third, a younger adult, was buried with the body tied up and stones put on his throat.

In Vrasta, Bulgaria a medieval "vampire" burial site was found during excavations of an ancient fortress. An elderly man was buried with a processed white stone deliberately placed over his heart. His feet had also been tied together.

That stones were used as soul, spirit anchors can be seen from the fact that they are used with or instead of stakes (wooden originally, metal later) which are the best known anti "vampire" weapon. Stakes were driven through bodies of suspected "vampires" to fix them to the ground and stop them from rising. There are reports that in the past, pagan Slavs marked every grave with a stake. And in some parts of Serbia where this custom survived until very recently, stakes were eventually replaced with tall slim standing stones, like these ones from Barajevo near Belgrade

That this was not just Slavic custom, can be seen from the fact that people buried with stones in their mouths were also in other parts of Europe. 

In Taverina, Italy, at "La Necropoli dei Bambini" or the Cemetery of Children, a 400 AD burial site where many babies and small children who died from malaria were buried, a 10-year-old child was buried with a stone in its mouth, which archaeologists believe was done to prevent it rising again from the dead.

During the survey of medieval churches in County Roscommon, Ireland, archaeologists discovered more than 120 skeletons dated to 7th-14th c. Two of them had stones wedged into their mouths "to stop their souls from escaping"

In the 3rd of 4th century AD in a farming community near the river Nene, in what’s now Stanwick, England, a man was buried face down, with a stone in his mouth where his tongue should be.

How old is this custom? I have no idea really. Where does it originate? Again, I don't know. But probably Balkans. Why? Have a look at this:

Nea Nikomedeia, Middle Neolithic (5500 - 3500 BC), Greece. Person buried with a stone in their mouth.

Another "vampire" burial? Most likely. I don't think this is a random thing. Showing a stone into the mouth of a dead person during his (hers) burial is a deliberate ritual act, rarely performed, based on a definite strong belief in that stone serving some very important purpose.

Anyone knows of any similar burials from Bronze Age and Iron Age Balkans? Or anywhere else in the world? Is it possible that this custom and this belief survived through all these millenniums? It wouldn't be the first...

Another more recent variant of this ritual, is placing piece of brick into deceased mouth instead of rock.

In Plovdiv, Bulgaria, skeleton was found facing westwards, with a brick fragment placed in its mouth, and a clay roofing tile over the head. The skeleton is one of 80 found in a necropolis in the old town part of Plovdiv, tentatively dated from the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries...

On the small Italian island of Lazzaretto Nuovo in the Venice lagoon, while excavating graves of plague victims buried in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, archaeologists discovered what they believe to be the remains of a female "vampire". The skull of a mature female was found with a brick placed in her mouth. According to the local folk tradition, brick or stone placed between the jaws was said to prevent a vampire from feeding on victims of the plague.

More about "vampire burials" can be found in this great article:

"Time to Slay Vampire Burials? The Archaeological and Historical Evidence for Vampires in Europe" by David Barrowclough

This use of brick fragments instead of stones in ritual tying down of the ghosts, shows that the reason why stones were used for this purpose was by then forgotten.

The use of rocks for tying ghosts down was used because people in the Balkans believed that stones and rocks absorb and trap spirits.

Remember the Serbian ritual trapping of someone's shadow into the stone foundations of a new house, in order to form a "protective spirit" which would watch over the house and its inhabitants?

Until the first person dies in the house and his spirit takes over the job of the protective spirit...

There are records of ritual building in of people into the foundations of important building such as fortresses and bridges for the same purpose. I talked about this in my post "New house"

These spirits were tied into the stone from which the building was built...

How archaic this belief that stones and rocks absorb and trap spirits is, can be seen from these two customs from the Balkans:

In Kosovo, when Albanians had to cut a particularly "powerful" tree, they used to place a pebble on the stump. Probably to stop the tree spirit from leaving the stump and punishing them for their crime...

In Serbia, when a particularly potent medicinal plant needed to be collected,  any stone found nearby was thrown in the air and the plant had to be pulled out before the stone fell on the ground or the plant spirit, which gave the plant its medicinal properties, would leave the plant for the stone, and the plant would be useless...

Here it was plant spirits, which were trapped by the rocks. So it seems that people in the Balkans believed that any spirit could be captured and preserved in the rock.

This is really cool and explains why for instance hearth, doorstep and house corners were by Serbs considered to be holy places. In the old houses of Central Europe, which were built out of wood, or wattle and daub, the only stone parts were hearth stones (stones which formed the bottom and the curb of the heath), doorstep stones and corner stones (which supported the main upright stakes which held the whole house)...

Slavs believed that their dead ancestors live with them in their houses under the hearth, under the doorstep and in the corners of the house...In stones which were located there...Interestingly these same places were by Slavs believed to be the places where God (first Pagan then Christian) resided...

This is why it was on the hearth, on the doorstep and in corners of the house, that Serbs made their sacrifices to the dead and to God...

The same belief of the corner stones being the seat of the protective spirit is found in Baltic countries. I talked about it in my post "Stones with narrow bottom bowls".

Slavs actually wanted their ancestors to live with them. They believed that it was the dead ancestors, their spirits, which protected the living and gave good health, good luck, good harvest....

So is this belief the reason why people believed in the power of stone idols? Stone is just a stone unless a spirit of an ancestor (or deity) is believed to reside inside of it. In which case stone is the deity. When Slavs brought sacrifices to the Dabog stone during the rain making ritual in Belarus, they were bringing sacrifices to Dabog...

When Slavs brought sacrifices and prayed to "Baba" (Grandmother) stones, they brought sacrifices and prayed to Mother Earth which resided in them...

This is seriously cool...

Nav

"On Christmas morning in Scandinavia every gable, gateway, or barn-door, is decorated with a sheaf of grain fixed on the top of a tall pole, wherefrom it is intended that the birds should make their Christmas dinner"

Quote from 1902 book "Christmas: Its Origin and Associations", by William Francis Dawson

"In pre-Christian times, Slavs believed that souls of their dead entered birds and through birds entered heaven, Iriy. So feeding birds with grain during  winter was basically a form of sacrificing grain to the ancestors."

Quote from my post "Bird wedding" 

Are these customs linked? 

This is the page about a strange creature from Serbian folklore called "Nav". 

The page is from the beautiful illustrated children's book on Serbian mythology called "Ale i Bauci" by Rastko Ćirić.

According to the Serbian mythology, soul of a dead unbaptised child enters a bird and becomes a "nav". It screeches during the night most commonly making crying sounds. It can make breastfeeding mothers go dry. Crossing yourself and saying "I baptise myself" makes it disappear.

This is very interesting. Slavic word Nav denote the souls of the dead in Slavic mythology. The singular form (Nav or Nawia) is also used as a name for the "otherworld". 

In Slavic mythology, souls of the dead entered birds who brought them to irij, paradise. Birds then brought the souls back when they were ready to be reborn. It is interesting that only the souls of unbaptised (still pagan) children become "nav" 🙂

What is even more interesting is that in Irish the word for saint is "naomh" which is pronounced like "n(i)ev" and which comes from Old Irish noíb (noeb) meaning sacred, holy. 

And that in Irish the word for heaven (where saints (naomh) go) is "neamh" which is pronounced like "nav" 🙂and which comes from PIE "*nébʰos." meaning sky which is in Slavic "nebo" 🙂

So in Slavic languages the dead, (navi) go to underworld, old pagan heaven probably, (nav) and in Irish language saints (niev) go to haven (nav)...