The Role of the Game and the Festival in the Forming of Gender Stereotypes (On the Example of the Festive Culture of Spain).

This paper considers the game aspect of the courtship rituals during holding the traditional spring and autumn holidays in Spain. The nature of the calendar holidays during this period had the link with the ancient rituals of fertility, that was considered in the classical paper of J. Frezer. The sense content of the May tree holiday was emphasized by the choice of the most beautiful girl and boy of the country. Swings were an important element of the party. Due to the interference of the court and folk cultures it took the image of the gallant courtship of the girl, the semantics of which were rethought, the sacral content of which was replaced by the game one. In this game the gender stereotypes were transmitted to the society. The installation of swings eventually spread over the whole country. Over the centuries this tradition was held in all the regions of Spain, though due to the second demographical transition it gradually lost its significance. The author comes to a conclusion that the vanishing of this ritual from the autochtonous culture was determined by the social processes, migrations and urbanization. The change of value dominants and ideological markers leads to the vanishing of the basic semantics of this ritual and the very party. Nowadays the relic of this tradition is kept in some villages and is recognized as a part of non-material heritage of Andalusia. This enables to execute the tradition transmission in a new form for the next generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]