How did festivals appear?

The oldest human rituals and dances came from the lack of understanding of surrounding nature changes – why do seasons periodically change: spring after winter, summer after spring, autumn after summer. Season works, festivals and dances associated with these changes changed as well.

At the end of the work season people used to celebrate dressed in various imaginative animal costumes (totems) as if they were responsible for the harvested income.

All the rites and myths are closely related and came from the work they did. Lithuanian customs are closely associated with the magic and mythology which came from the oldes mankind‘s philosophical understanding .

Folk traditions, customs, rites and dances have played a significant role over the years in the development of social, cultural and spiritual life.

Seeing this we can reconstruct the development of human consiousness . Almost all of the folk culture achievements, especially the verbal and artistic creativity, are firmly established in our customs and dances, which slightly modified are retelled from generation to generation.

Even this was encouraging a routine, but this helped to preserve an allowed to remain for the whole folk material and historical sources, which now can help to reveal the development of the progress of human consiousness.

All the dances came and were maintained by the anual human work and life. Each major anual festival is related with the different traditions and customs. We can firmly state that the amount of diversity of customs is as big as amount of people which celebrate them.

Even Christian festivals, which are celebrated globally, are celebrated differently in various countries. We can divide dances into three main kinds: the old ones, which came through the generations from the immemorial times; the Christian ones and those which are generated by the surround almost artificially.

Agrarian festival dances and customs came from the importance of the sourrounding nature laws and periodic change of the seasons (winter is changed by spring – the

return of the sun; spring changed by summer meant seeding and earthwork; summer changed by autumn meant harvest time; autumn changed by winter meant the end of the synny

days) and the end of the work seasons.

The end of the one work meant the begining of the another: the first ground work, the first animals in the fields, the first seeding, the first hay harvest, harvesting and other...

Various dances were danced and rite performed in such occasions. A very rich and complex art was created during these celebrations, which evolved from people philosophical understanding.