Res Humanitariae

The article focuses on the shift in meaning assigned to the symbol of the holiday tree, specifically its transformation from the Christmas tree into a New Year’s tree. This transformation occurred due to the reorganisation of the ritual calendar by the Soviet occupying regime in Lithuania. The primary objective is to discuss the (political) contest for dominance over this symbol, as portrayed in children’s periodicals, interwar Lithuanian Žiburėlis and Soviet Lithuanian Genys. The theoretical approach is based on the concept of symbolic conflict as articulated by the anthropologist Simon Harrison. The study helps us to understand the mechanism behind the shift of meaning concerning the holiday tree in Soviet Lithuania.

The article presents the traditions and superstitions of film production workers in Lithuania in the mid-20th and the early 21st century. Based on field research data collected in 2020 and 2021, it turned out that most traditions are transferred or adopted from other countries’ film industries and their employees. The research data reveal what symbolic actions are performed on a film set to indicate the successful implementation of the project or part of it. The strengthening of social ties between film production workers is expressed through the tradition of gift-giving or other traditions formed in individual groups, whereas superstitions, which are common among film production workers, are mostly aimed at attracting success, dealing with fear or anxiety while working on a project, or avoiding anything you do not want to happen.

The subject of this research is feminine gender roles in Kristina Sabaliauskaitė’s Silva rerum and Kerstin Thorvall’s The Story of Signe. The aim of the thesis is to identify the most common traditional and non-traditional gender roles of women in historical literary narratives by two women writers. The study identifies six gender roles of women: four traditional (mother and wife, daughter and care-giver/housewife), and two non-traditional (adventurer and competitor). The research shows that in historical literary narratives, despite the space-time of the novels, the main semantic axis remains the traditional gender roles of women. The failure to fulfil traditional gender roles determines the emergence of non-traditional gender roles, and a negative impact on the state of women in the novels.