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MIDWINTER NIGHT'S EVE: Y U L E
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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 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!'