Rituals of Social Legitimization in the Lithuanian Childbirth Customs System: Traditions and Innovations

Abstract

By comparing data of the descriptions of birth customs of Lithuania Minor at the end of the seventeenth century and personal fieldwork data collected in the villages and small towns of south-eastern Lithuania (Dzūkija ethnographic region) in 1992–2007, I discuss the problem of modernization of Lithuanian culture through the diachronic change of structural elements of the birth cycle performed after the birth of a child. I distinguish the three consecutive stages in the cycle of birth customs – the first visit to the baby and the mother (lankynos), baptism, and churching of the woman – and make an attempt to reveal changes in them in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries in terms of historical development, chronological duration, and social interaction.