In this popular book by N. a survey of the evolution of Judeo-Christian festival tradition is given. In the introduction, the author says that the book is a reworked version of his research ‘The Origin of Jewish Festivals and Christian Cult’ published in Gomel in 1926. He declares the enlightening aim of his new book: it is designed to help in the process of transformation of the worldview of working people into the scientific one. He interpreted Christian festivals as a result of mixing various elements — Jewish, Greek, Persian, Babylonian, and Roman ones. At that, he stresses the principal importance of the Judaic religious tradition for the shaping of the Christian liturgical cycle.

According the time of their origin, and their character, all Judaic festivals are classified into three categories. The first one includes the festivals of the nomadic period, when ancestors of Jews were mainly occupied with cattle breeding. The author mentions Pesach without matzo, Yom Kippur, and Sabbath, which was, on his opinion, monthly, not weekly day. The second category includes festivals of the agrarian epoch, since the settling the Israel tribes in Canaan. Here, the author mentions the festival of matzo (initially separated from Pesach), Shavuot, and Sukkot. The last one was connected with the beginning of a new year. The third category includes festivals which appeared after the Babylonian captivity, when ‘Jews organized a religious community under the power of foreign rulers’. The author means Hanukkah, and Purim.

Good knowledge of ancient oriental languages allows the author make interesting hypotheses. For instance, N. offers to build the etymology of the word ‘Pesach’ from Akkadian pašāhu ‘to propitiate (the angry god)’; or he treated the autumnal festival of Yom Kippur and exact parallel to Pesach. In the names and lexis of the festival of Purim he finds gods of the Babylonian pantheon, and the ancient practice of fortune-telling through casting lots.

Describing Christian festivals, the author compares them with the earlier Judaic tradition, and with ideas of the Greek and Roma world, and them makes an accent at the syncretism of the new Christian tradition and ancient pagan beliefs of peoples, accepted Christianity. He puts a special attention to a comparison of the early cult if Christ and the cults of dying and resurrecting gods of fertility — Adonis, and Attis.

The author regularly stresses his class approach to the material in study. Speaking about the popularity of Christianity in the classic world, he attracts attention of the reader to the social group of oriental small bourgeoisie which could not stand against Romans with weapons, but found consolation in the illusions of various mystical doctrines. That bourgeoisie replaced proletarians and slaves in the circles of adepts of that new religion, and the initial political, liberation pathos of Christianity was silent with eschatological expectations. Gnosticism is evaluated by N. as a conciliatory ideology, which had not been supported by masses, and had not got popularity among elites. Having overcome Gnostics, Christian declared their doctrine the religion of tolerance and suffering, finding their hope in a happy posthumous life of resurrected adepts. It gave a possibility to use Christianity as a tool of control over common people thourgh centuries.