THE HOST AS THE MAIN COMMUNICANT OF CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR HOLIDAYS (ON THE MATERIAL OF UKRAINIAN CHRISTMAS CAROLS)

Abstract

The article deals with the image of the host as the main communicant of the Christmas and New Year ritual on the material of the Christmas carols.
The Christmas carols addressed to the host belong to the archaic texts of folk literature and are directly related to the ritual of caroling; they poetically reflect the key stages of ritual action. The linguistic analysis of these texts contributes to the multifaceted study of mythopoetic ideas and reconstruction of the mythological model of the world.
The image of the host is of particular importance in the texts studied. A comprehensive analysis of nominations for the designation of a ritual object reveals significant socio-cultural meanings of the ritual of caroling, as well as tracing diverse mythological poetic ideas about the sphere of the sacred. The peculiarities of nominations of the image of the host are analyzed in the work, the names for designation of typical attributes and location of the object of caroling are considered.
The semantics, ceremonial functionality and mythopoetic origins of fixed lexemes and epithet combinations are investigated. It is determined that the polysymbolic image of the host combines socio-cultural ideas about the ideal object of ritual action, performer of Christmas and New Year rituals and sacred meanings related to ancient cultural  beliefs and myths.
Material from ethnographic sources is involved in the analysis, because the specific features of the Christmas and New Year ritual are reflected in the poetic structure of the analyzed works, affect the semantics of key images.
At the end of the article, the results of the study were summarized and the prospects for further exploration in this direction were determined.