Fire from the domestic hearth was under no circumstances given out of the house on Christmas Eve, not even to a neighbor whose fire had gone out. The reason for this prohibition, according to Čajkanović, was the belief that the Eve is a time when the ancestral spirits, guardians of the family's happiness and prosperity, are especially active in this world. Christmas Eve dinner is a feast prepared in their honor, and they join the family at it. They gather on the straw spread over the floor, and on the hearth. These spirits could be removed from the family if any piece of their fire were taken away by an outsider. In people's words, fire should not be given lest the luck be taken away from the house, or for better crops, or because of bees. Referring to the latter explanation, Čajkanović argues that, in the old religion of the Serbs, the bees were regarded as pure and sacred insects, in whom ancestral spirits could dwell. The same explanation, "because of bees", is also given for the aforementioned custom of putting a piece of the "badnjak"'s first splinter in the dough for the "česnica".