On the Borders of Ethnolinguistic Equivalence: Belarusian-South Slavic Parallels
On the Borders of Ethnolinguistic Equivalence: Belarusian-South Slavic Parallels

Summary/Abstract: This article compares and analyses, with the involvement of recent Belarusian materials, the two fragments of Belarusian spiritual culture and relevant South Slavic traditions, related to: a) Christmas (in southern Slawiya, it is concentrated around the badnjak, a log burned on Christmas Eve), and b) bear days/festivities (called kamajedzica in Belarusian ethnoculture). It is acknowledged that the detection of new pairs of Belarusian-South Slavic isolexes/isodoxes/isopragms or the new interpretation of those detected earlier is not only valuable as a fact, but also as a chance for providing heuristic evaluation of the outcome of such comparison for the purposes of a new comprehension of the nature of different phenomena of spiritual culture under comparison, within their own rite-ritual continua and, in relation to that, for objectifying the historical borders of ethnolinguistic equivalence.

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