Ziemassvētki

Later this "tree", which could not be a spruce, but an "installation" made only out of wooden sticks, along with songs and dances were brought forth outside the celebrating house, where it had been located for the entire Ziemassvētki period and was burned on a spot in Town Hall Square around 6 January.

That same evening is also called as Yule Eve, because back then they pulled around a log with great shouting, which is then burned and was shown for your enjoyment.Russow Chronicle on Ziemassvētki traditions in Livonia before 16th century.

After good drinking, the merchant youth installed a large fir tree in Market Square, decorated with roses.

Likewise, it neither measured nor ended roundabout amusements, day and night, wife and virgin society, despite all the pastor's sermons.Alongside Ziemassvētki, an ancient Latvian tradition is preserved in the so-called Yule Eve, reminiscent of ancient ritual activities - log pulling, mimicking solar progress.

It was made from shelled (crushed in a mortar) barley or wheat grains, which were boiled with a half of a pig head; the spread tended to also add peas and beans.

This was Father Budēļi's ferrule of life, to which Latvian tradition attributed a magical power of health, fertility and carried a moral status, in tune with Europe wide distributed habit of expecting winter solstice with scalded branches, they took it along for marches and, touched with it people and beasts, transferring to them a life force, that dwells in these branches.

[3] In Courland and Semigallia regions, ķekatas or ķiņķēziņus (ķēmus) were called budēļi (also known as bubuļi, buduļi, buki, būzaļi, buzuļi) or dancing children, Vidzeme region calls them vecīši, maskās (maskarati), skutelnieki (suselnieki), nūjinieki (kūjinieki), preiļi, kurciemi.

Buki's masks were made under the sheet by affixing a flexible card arcing downward, which was covered with a sheet and attached to it horns and a beard, as for cranes - they inverted the fur coat to the other side and in one sleeve put an ax with a head, with spoons tied to both sides, which looked like ears and a beak, which could be modified.

An adopted tradition is that gifts are brought by Ziemassvētku vecītis (also known as Santa Claus or Salavecis in recent times), who is sometimes helped by dwarfs or Snow White.