Coven of Cythrawl
yule
Yule, also called Winter Solstice, celebrates the rebirth of the Sun, the Sun God and honors the Horned God. On Yule we experience the longest night of the year. Although much of the winter's harshest weather is still ahead of us, we celebrate the coming light, and thank the Gods for seeing us through the longest night. It is a time to look on the past year's achievements and to celebrate with family and friends. From this day until Midsummer, the days grow longer, everyday banishing the darkness a little more in a glow of the warm sunlight that brings the world to life again. This day is the official first day of winter. This holiday will fall somewhere between the dates above and varies from year to year depending on when the Sun reaches the southern most point in its yearly trek.
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 both Martin Luther and John Calvin 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. This year (1988) it occurs on December 21st at 9:28 am
CST. 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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