Midwinter
Night's Eve:
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 twenty-fifth, we nonetheless follow many
of the traditional customs of the season: decorated trees, caroling,
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 its 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 predated 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, seedtime
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, since 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, the Yule festival
of the Saxons, and the midwinter revels of the Celts.
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’ 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 midwinter celebrations. 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 caroling, 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
21. It is a Lesser Sabbat or Low 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, lighted
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!”
Document
Copyright © 1986, 1995, 2005 by Mike Nichols.
Permission is given to re-publish this document only
as long as no information is lost or changed,
credit is given to the author, and it is provided or used without cost
to others.
This notice represents an exception to the copyright notice found in
the
Acorn Guild Press edition of The Witches' Sabbats and applies only to
the text as given above.
Other uses of this document must be approved in writing by Mike
Nichols.
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