The wedding2 is an integral part of family life. The ways in which it is organised can differ not only between representatives of different religious groups, but also between members of the same denomination. By applying cultural-historical, ethnographic and qualitative data processing method, the paper focuses on transformations in Old Believer wedding rites between the first half of the 20th century and the present. Analysis of interviews conducted in the south-eastern region of Latvia reveals that there have been several variations in Old Believer weddings (traditional, religious and civil) which interacted and overlapped, thus creating new hybrid forms. The transformations depended on urbanisation and economic processes, political conditions, and the development of the community in interaction with other ethnic and religious groups under conditions of globalisation.

Under the contemporary social and economic conditions, no culture can stay “sterile”. Growth of Internet communication and globalization processes facilitates borrowing of new realia including festivities and festive traditions and their circulation in the global culture environment. One of such realia that has become extremely widespread in Europe and the whole world is St. Valentine’s Day. Recent research literature regards it in various aspects (psychological, feminist, commercial, etc.); researchers are also interested in the experience of celebrating St. Valentine’s Day in diverse regions and countries. The present paper aims at characterizing the specificity of perceiving St. Valentine’s Day in Latvia on the basis of newspaper, magazine, almanac articles available to readers in the course of 70 years (since the 1950s till nowadays). On the basis of article content analysis, the paper marks the trends characteristic of Latvian society in treatment of St. Valentine’s Day under different historical, political, and economic conditions, Latvians being in their homeland and/or in exile. The compiled materials show that St. Valentine’s Day entered Latvian culture space and got rooted there only after regaining state independence – in the 1990s and especially in the 21st century. Nowadays it is represented in various spheres of public life, yet the residents’ reaction to this phenomenon that is still foreign to many is rather ambiguous. St. Valentine’s Day is not only associated with love and romance but is treated as a tool that yields commercial profit for traders, whereas for others it causes needless expenses, depression, and disappointment.

Holiday advertising is a rather topical object of research that nowadays attracts attention of specialists in various branches opening new perspectives of investigating this phenomenon. One of them is the analysis of the specificity of functioning and perception of holiday advertising in various European and world countries including a comparative perspective of the border zone. The present paper reveals the specificity of the perception of holiday advertising by the example of the south-eastern region of Latvia – Latgale (the major object of the research) and Pskov region that is a part of the north-western federal province of Russia (the minor object of the research) on the basis of interviews carried out in 2018 with the participation of 906 residents of this border area. During the survey, respondents had an opportunity to express their opinion on holiday advertising in general as well as note the positive and negative impacts on a common present-day consumer. Processing of the survey data leads to the conclusion that the notion of holiday advertising in Latgale has been generally crystallized as it is rather often used in daily life, including for the selection of gifts for festive occasions, whereas in Pskov region there is no unified opinion on the essence and significance of holiday advertising yet as, in the respondents’ opinion, its potential is not used to a full extent.

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