lts as we have considered under the heading of Sacrifice and
Sacrament. A festival of the family--that is, perhaps, what Christmas
most prominently is to-day: it is the great season for gatherings "round
the old fireside"; it is a joyous time for the children of the house, and
the memory of the departed is vivid then, if unexpressed. Further, by the
Yule log customs and certain other ceremonies still practised in the
remoter corners of Europe, we are carried back to a stage of thought at
which the dead were conceived as hovering about or |181| visiting the
abodes of the living. Ancestral spirits, it seems, were once believed to
be immanent in the fire that burned on the hearth, and had to be
propitiated with libations, while elsewhere the souls of the dead were
thought to return to their old homes at the New Year, and meat and drink
had to be set out for them. The Church's establishment of All Souls' Day
did much to keep practices of tendance of the departed to early November,
but sometimes these have wandered to later dates and especially to
Christmas. In folk-practices directed towards the dead two tendencies are
to be found: on the one hand affection or at all events consideration for
the departed persists, and efforts are made to make them comfortable; on
the other, they are regarded with dread, and the sight of them is avoided
by the living.

In the passage quoted from Caesarius of Arles there was mention of the
laying of tables with abundance of food at the Kalends. The same practice
is condemned by St. Jerome in the fifth century, and is by him specially
connected with Egypt.{48} He, like Caesarius and others, regards it as a
kind of charm to ensure abundance during the coming year, but it is very
possible that its real purpose was different, that the food was an
offering to supernatural beings, the guardians and representatives of the
dead.{49} Burchardus of Worms in the early eleventh century says
definitely that in his time tables were laid with food and drink and
three knives for "those three Sisters whom the ancients in their folly
called _Parcae_."{50} The _Parcae_ were apparently identified with the
three "weird" Sisters known in England and in other Teutonic regions, and
seem to have some connection with the fairies. As we shall see later on,
it is still in some places the custom to lay out tables for supernatural
beings, whether, as at All Souls' tide, explicitly for the dead, or for
Frau Perchta, or for