Ethnic and Confessional Aspects of a Holiday in the City of Vilnius

Abstract

This article analyzes ethnic and confessional aspects of the New Year festival in Vilnius city. It is based on fieldwork data collected through semistructured
interviews, freeform conversations, published sources, and is grounded on the historical comparative method. The author shows that a celebration of the same festival among different ethnic and confessional groups of people living in one city, viewed historically, can create symbolic boundaries of otherness
or, in some instances, reduce such boundaries.