first splinter in the dough for the česnica. The Russian philologist Vladimir Toporov has proposed that the felling of the badnjak was originally a reenactment of the mythical fight in which Mladi Božić ("young god") slew his father Stari Badnjak ("old Badnjak"). Božić, the diminutive form of the noun bog, meaning god, is also the Serbian for "Christmas". The characters of Stari Badnjak and Mladi Božić are found in old Serbian Christmas songs, where they are not explicitly referred to as father and son, and no fight between them is mentioned. By Toporov, the former personified the last day of the Old Year, the climax of the power of Chaos, and the latter personified the first day of the New Year, the beginning of reestablishment of Cosmic Order. He regards Stari Badnjak and Mladi Božić as originating from respectively the dragon and the dragon slayer of the Proto-Indo-European mythology. Stari Badnjak would be related to both the Vedic serpent Ahi Budhnya ("the Dragon of the Deep") killed by Indra, and the Greek dragon Python killed by Apollo. The words badnjak, budhnya, and python stem from the Proto-Indo-European root *bhudh-, denoting bottom, foundation, depths, and related notions. According to Russian philologist and mythographer Boris Uspensky, Stari Badnjak and Mladi Božić have analogues in East Slavic tradition—Nikola's Dad and Nikola. The name Nikola is a popular reference to Saint Nicholas of Myra, whose feast falls nineteen days before Christmas, on 6 December, his "dad" being celebrated the day before. Nikola is portrayed in East Slavic folklore as merciful and protective towards the common people, patron of animals and agriculture, connected with riches, abundance, and fertility. Uspensky argues that this saint took on attributes of the serpentine god Volos, whose cult was very strong among East Slavs before Christianization. He was the adversary of the dreadful thunder-god Perun, who is in this case reflected in Nikola's Dad. The notion of a quarrel between Nikola and his "dad" is present in a number of legends. The connection between the father–son pairs of Stari Badnjak–Mladi Božić and Nikola's Dad–Nikola is corroborated by the fact that, in many East Slavic regions, practices characteristic for Christmas have been transferred to the Feast of Saint Nicholas. There is, however, an inversion in the comparison between these two pairs. In the former pair, the first stems from the mythical dragon, and the second from the dragon fighter, while in