the Theotokos gave birth to Christ at Bethlehem, wrapped him in cloths and laid him in a manger. By Holy Tradition, the manger was located in a cave near that town. An angel of the Lord appeared to a group of shepherds who were keeping watch over their flock by night in that region, and told them that the Savior was born at Bethlehem. They went there and found the baby lying in the manger, as the angel described to them. By folk tradition, the shepherds brought firewood to the cave and built a fire to warm the newborn Christ and his mother throughout the night. The burning of the badnjak commemorates this event. While blessing the badnjak, some priests chant the following prayer: "O Lord Jesus Christ, our God, who did plant the Tree of Life in paradise so that it might bestow upon us eternal blessedness, bless also now this tree which is a symbol of Thy cross and the Tree of Life in paradise, and which reminds us of Thy holy birth and of the logs which the shepherds of Bethlehem kindled to warm themselves when they came to worship Thee, the divine infant, and thereby prefigured Thy salvation-bearing cross." Scholars regard the badnjak customs as practises inherited from the old Slavic religion. In the pre-Christian religion of the Serbs, as shown by Serbian scholar Veselin Čajkanović, there were trees seen as dwelling places of spirits or divinities. Čajkanović argues that there were also trees seen as divinities per se. He considers the badnjak as a convincing example of the latter. Salutations, prayers, and sacrifices such as grain, wine, and honey are offered to him (the name badnjak is of masculine gender in Serbian); he is consistently treated not as a tree but as a person. German scholar and folklorist Wilhelm Mannhardt holds that the log represented an incarnation of the spirit of vegetation. The sacrifices offered to the badnjak were meant to guarantee the fertility of fields, the health and happiness of the family. Its burning symbolized sunshine, and was intended to secure the vitalizing power of the sun in the ensuing year. The lighting of the log could be regarded as a fusion of tree worship and fire worship, attested in Slavic customs; e.g., Istrians fed the logs lighted on St. John's Day by sprinkling wheat upon them. Čajkanović characterizes the pre-Christian badnjak as a