Mid-Winter: Yule
By Mike Nichols
Our Christian friends are often quite surprised
at how enthusiastically we Pagans celebrate the 'Christmas'
season. Even though we prefer to use the word 'Yule', and our
celebrations may peak a few days before the 25th, we nonetheless
follow many of the traditional customs of the season: decorated
trees, carolling, presents, Yule logs, and mistletoe. We might
even go so far as putting up a 'Nativity set', though for us
the three central characters are likely to be interpreted as
Mother Nature, Father Time, and the Baby Sun-God. None of this
will come as a surprise to anyone who knows the true history
of the holiday, of course.
In fact, if truth be known, the holiday of Christmas has always
been more Pagan than Christian, with it's associations of Nordic
divination, Celtic fertility rites, and Roman Mithraism. That
is why John Calvin and other leaders of the Reformation abhorred
it, why the Puritans refused to acknowledge it, much less celebrate
it (to them, no day of the year could be more holy than the
Sabbath), and why it was even made illegal in Boston! The holiday
was already too closely associated with the birth of older Pagan
gods and heroes. And many of them (like Oedipus, Theseus, Hercules,
Perseus, Jason, Dionysus, Apollo, Mithra, Horus and even Arthur)
possessed a narrative of birth, death, and resurrection that
was uncomfortably close to that of Jesus. And to make matters
worse, many of them pre-dated the Christian Savior.
Ultimately, of course, the holiday is rooted deeply in the
cycle of the year. It is the Winter Solstice that is being celebrated,
seed-time of the year, the longest night and shortest day. It
is the birthday of the new Sun King, the Son of God -- by whatever
name you choose to call him. On this darkest of nights, the
Goddess becomes the Great Mother and once again gives birth.
And it makes perfect poetic sense that on the longest night
of the winter, 'the dark night of our souls', there springs
the new spark of hope, the Sacred Fire, the Light of the World,
the Coel Coeth.
That is why Pagans have as much right to claim this holiday
as Christians. Perhaps even more so, as the Christians were
rather late in laying claim to it, and tried more than once
to reject it. There had been a tradition in the West that Mary
bore the child Jesus on the twenty-fifth day, but no one could
seem to decide on the month. Finally, in 320 C.E., the Catholic
Fathers in Rome decided to make it December, in an effort to
co-opt the Mithraic celebration of the Romans and the Yule celebrations
of the Celts and Saxons.
There was never much pretense that the date they
finally chose was historically accurate. Shepherds just don't
'tend their flocks by night' in the high pastures in the dead
of winter! But if one wishes to use the New Testament as historical
evidence, this reference may point to sometime in the spring as
the time of Jesus's birth. This is because the lambing season
occurs in the spring and that is the only time when shepherds
are likely to 'watch their flocks by night' -- to make sure the
lambing goes well. Knowing this, the Eastern half of the Church
continued to reject December 25, preferring a 'movable date' fixed
by their astrologers according to the moon.
Thus, despite its shaky start (for over three centuries, no
one knew when Jesus was supposed to have been born!), December
25 finally began to catch on. By 529, it was a civic holiday,
and all work or public business (except that of cooks, bakers,
or any that contributed to the delight of the holiday) was prohibited
by the Emperor Justinian. In 563, the Council of Braga forbade
fasting on Christmas Day, and four years later the Council of
Tours proclaimed the twelve days from December 25 to Epiphany
as a sacred, festive season. This last point is perhaps the
hardest to impress upon the modern reader, who is lucky to get
a single day off work. Christmas, in the Middle Ages, was not
a single day, but rather a period of twelve days, from December
25 to January 6. The Twelve Days of Christmas, in fact. It is
certainly lamentable that the modern world has abandoned this
approach, along with the popular Twelfth Night celebrations.
Of course, the Christian version of the holiday
spread to many countries no faster than Christianity itself, which
means that 'Christmas' wasn't celebrated in Ireland until the
late fifth century; in England, Switzerland, and Austria until
the seventh; in Germany until the eighth; and in the Slavic lands
until the ninth and tenth. Not that these countries lacked their
own mid-winter celebrations of Yuletide. Long before the world
had heard of Jesus, Pagans had been observing the season by bringing
in the Yule log, wishing on it, and lighting it from the remains
of last year's log. Riddles were posed and answered, magic and
rituals were practiced, wild boars were sacrificed and consumed
along with large quantities of liquor, corn dollies were carried
from house to house while carolling, fertility rites were practiced
(girls standing under a sprig of mistletoe were subject to a bit
more than a kiss), and divinations were cast for the coming Spring.
Many of these Pagan customs, in an appropriately watered-down
form, have entered the mainstream of Christian celebration, though
most celebrants do not realize (or do not mention it, if they
do) their origins.
For modern Witches, Yule (from the Anglo-Saxon 'Yula', meaning
'wheel' of the year) is usually celebrated on the actual Winter
Solstice, which may vary by a few days, though it usually occurs
on or around December 21st. It is a Lesser Sabbat or Lower Holiday
in the modern Pagan calendar, one of the four quarter-days of
the year, but a very important one. Pagan customs are still
enthusiastically followed. Once, the Yule log had been the center
of the celebration. It was lighted on the eve of the solstice
(it should light on the first try) and must be kept burning
for twelve hours, for good luck. It should be made of ash. Later,
the Yule log was replaced by the Yule tree but, instead of burning
it, burning candles were placed on it. In Christianity, Protestants
might claim that Martin Luther invented the custom, and Catholics
might grant St. Boniface the honor, but the custom can demonstrably
be traced back through the Roman Saturnalia all the way to ancient
Egypt. Needless to say, such a tree should be cut down rather
than purchased, and should be disposed of by burning, the proper
way to dispatch any sacred object.
Along with the evergreen, the holly and the ivy
and the mistletoe were important plants of the season, all symbolizing
fertility and everlasting life. Mistletoe was especially venerated
by the Celtic Druids, who cut it with a golden sickle on the sixth
night of the moon, and believed it to be an aphrodisiac. (Magically
-- not medicinally! It's highly toxic!) But aphrodisiacs must
have been the smallest part of the Yuletide menu in ancient times,
as contemporary reports indicate that the tables fairly creaked
under the strain of every type of good food. And drink! The most
popular of which was the 'wassail cup' deriving its name from
the Anglo-Saxon term 'waes hael' (be whole or hale).
Medieval Christmas folklore seems endless: that animals will
all kneel down as the Holy Night arrives, that bees hum the
'100th psalm' on Christmas Eve, that a windy Christmas will
bring good luck, that a person born on Christmas Day can see
the Little People, that a cricket on the hearth brings good
luck, that if one opens all the doors of the house at midnight
all the evil spirits will depart, that you will have one lucky
month for each Christmas pudding you sample, that the tree must
be taken down by Twelfth Night or bad luck is sure to follow,
that 'if Christmas on a Sunday be, a windy winter we shall see',
that 'hours of sun on Christmas Day, so many frosts in the month
of May', that one can use the Twelve Days of Christmas to predict
the weather for each of the twelve months of the coming year,
and so on.
Remembering that most Christmas customs are ultimately based
upon older Pagan customs, it only remains for modern Pagans
to reclaim their lost traditions. In doing so, we can share
many common customs with our Christian friends, albeit with
a slightly different interpretation. And thus we all share in
the beauty of this most magical of seasons, when the Mother
Goddess once again gives birth to the baby Sun-God and sets
the wheel in motion again. To conclude with a long-overdue paraphrase,
'Goddess bless us, every one!'
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This page last updated December 11, 2006
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