Note 85 — Chapter VI · PRE-CHRISTIAN WINTER FESTIVALS

Another suggested explanation connects the change of clothes with rites of initiation at the passage from boyhood to manhood. “Manhood, among primitive peoples, seems to be envisaged as ceasing to be a woman.... Man is born of woman, reared of woman. When he passes to manhood, he ceases to be a woman-thing, and begins to exercise functions other and alien. That moment is one naturally of extreme peril; he at once emphasizes it and disguises it. He wears woman's clothes.” From initiation rites, according to this theory, the custom spread to other occasions when it was desirable to “change the luck.”