Natalia Gromova
Candidate of historical sciences, assistant professor of the Department of Ethnology and Local History,
Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv,
Kyiv, Ukraine
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9738-2396
DOI: 10.17721/2522-4611.2025.51.3
ANTI-BEHAVIOUR IN THE CALENDAR AND FAMILY RITUALS OF UKRAINIANS
IN THE LATE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURIES
The issue of inverted folk morality, or anti-behaviour, is an important one for ethnological study, as this aspect of folk culture remains relevant in our time. At the same time, it is insufficiently studied due to its specificity - many researchers of calendar and family customs have deliberately ignored it.
Anti-behaviour means that during sacred times, people allowed their negative emotions to be released – but only in a way determined by tradition. Thus, legalised forms of deviant behaviour on certain days and holidays helped people to keep themselves within the cultural framework and to be virtuous in other, profane times.
The article highlights the manifestations of anti-behaviour in the calendar, wedding, and funeral rites of Ukrainians. The author clarifies the functions that deviant ritualised behaviour has played in the past and continues to play in our time, and also explores the transformations of the laughter culture of Ukrainians during the late nineteenth and early twenty-first centuries, i.e. during the period of traditional society, under Soviet rule and during Ukraine's independence.
Key words: anti-behaviour, laughing culture, losses, mischief, carnival, nativity scene, Malanka, pereberia, ritual travesty.
Received by the editorial board: 25.03.2025.
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