Folk beliefs, festivals and ceremonies in adana’s folk culture

This study focused on people?s beliefs, festivals and ceremonies inAdana?s central regions, Seyhan and Yüreğir.After knowledge about folk beliefs, which was gathered through writtendocuments was given in the first part of the study ; folk beliefs gathered through verbalsources were classified. The relationship between this knowledge gathered throughverbal sources and old Turkish beliefs, religions, cultures was investigated.In the second part of the study, the knowledge about festivals and ceremoniestook place. In this part of the study, firstly written documents were used as a source ofknowledge as well as in the first part of the study. Festivals were divided into twocategories as religious and national festivals. Before the title of religious festivals,important religious days (kandil) and holy months as an important step of this kind offestivals were explained. Then the connection between them and religious festivals wereexamined under the title of festivals. Information about National festivals was alsogiven after religious festivals. Besides, after giving information about spring festivalsand ceremony of abundance , the evaluation of festivals and ceremonies took place atthe end of this part.The result of this study indicated that Adana?s folk culture have traces of MiddleAsia and Anatolian?s beliefs and cultural structure. All these traces also have effectedby Islam and its beliefs. Also this study established practices about these festivals andceremonies. As this text is a form of record of these practices, it might help to preventthem from disappearing.Key Words: Adana, Cultural Beliefs, Religious Day, Holy Months, Festivals,Ceremonies, Hıdrellez, Nevruz, Pray of Rain