Winter Solstice
/ Yule
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!'
| Authors Details: Winter Solstice /
Yule - Mike Nichols - Unknown Web Site |
More Articles On The Wiccan Sabbats
(The Eight
Wiccan Sabbats)
(Winter Solstice - Yule)
(Imbolc)
(Ostara)
(Beltane)
(Summer
Solstice)
(Lammas)
(Mabon)
(Halloween
/ Samhain) |
