Yule
From Traditional Witchcraft Wiki Project
Yule is a winter festival associated with the winter solstice celebrated in northern Europe since ancient times.
In pre-Christian times, Germanic pagans celebrated Yule from late December to early January on a date determined by a lunar calendar. During the process of Christianization and the adoption of the Julian calendar, Yule was placed on December 25, in order to correspond with the Christian celebrations later known in English as Christmas. Thus, the terms "Yule" and "Christmas" are often used interchangeably, especially in Christmas carols.
In Denmark, Norway and Sweden the term jul is the common way to refer to the celebration, including among Christians.
In Finland, it is called joulu, in Estonia jõulud, and in Iceland and the Faroe Islands jól.
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Ancient Yule
Yule celebrations at the winter solstice predate the conversion to Christianity. It was, in pre-conversion times, the name of a feast celebrated by sacrifice on mid-winter night of January 12th according to the Norwegian historian Olav Bø. Though there are numerous references to Yule in the Icelandic sagas, there are few accounts of how Yule was actually celebrated, beyond the fact that it was a time for feasting. According to Adam of Bremen, the Swedish kings sacrificed male slaves every ninth year during the Yule sacrifices at the Temple at Uppsala. 'Yule-Joy', with dancing, continued through the Middle Ages in Iceland, but was frowned upon when the Reformation arrived. The custom of ritually slaughtering a boar on Yule survives in the modern tradition of the Christmas ham and the Boar's Head Carol.
"On Yule Eve, the best boar in the herd was brought into the hall where the assembled company laid their hands upon the animal and made their unbreakable oaths. Heard by the boar, these oaths were thought to go straight to the ears of Freyr himself. Once the oaths had been sworn, the boar was sacrificed in the name of Freyr and the feast of boar flesh began. The most commonly recognised remnants of the sacred boar traditions once common at Yule has to be the serving of the boar's head at later Christmas feasts".
According to the medieval English writer the Venerable Bede, Christian missionaries sent to proselytize among the Germanic peoples of northern Europe were instructed to superimpose Christian themes upon existing pagan holidays of the area, to ease the conversion of the people to Christianity by allowing them to retain their traditional celebrations. Thus, Christmas was created by associating tales of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the central figure of Christianity, with the existing pagan Yule celebrations, similar to the formation of Easter, Halloween, and All Saint's Day via Christianization of existing pagan traditions.
The confraternities of artisans of the 9th century, which developed into the medieval guilds, were denounced by Catholic clergy for their "conjurations" when they swore to support one another in coming adversity and in business ventures. The occasions were annual banquets on December 26,
"feast day of the pagan god Jul, when it was possible to couple with the spirits of the dead and with demons that returned to the surface of the earth... Many clerics denounced these conjurations as being not only a threat to public order but also, more serious in their eyes, satanic and immoral. Hincmar, in 858, sought in vain to Christianize them."
Yule Decorations
The ancient pagan ancestors believed that tree spirits lived in the greenery such as holly, mistletoe and other ever-greens, they decorated there homes with. The greenery was brought into the house to provide a safe haven for the tree spirits durning the hash midwinter days. Soon after this period had ended, it was necessary to return the greenery back outside to relase the tree spirits in to the wild once again. Failture to do this meant that the vegetation would not be able to grown again in (spring time) the following year, which is where the superition of taking down of the decorations after the twelfth night came from.
Christmas Tree and The Yule Wreath
The evergreen tree or chirstmas tree symbolized the essence of the tree of life and was regarded as a phallic symbol for fertility of the land for the following year.
The [[evergreen] wreath or garland symbolized the circle of life in the yule period and represent the womb or vaginal symbol, in which all life shall spring from it and bring renewed power.
Yule Log
References
- "The Anglo-Saxon Calendar"
- Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, "Yule in Ancient Norway"
- AskOxford.com. Retrieved on 2007-11-20.
- (German) Fick, August; Falk, Hjalmar; Torp, Alf (1909). Wörterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen: Dritter Teil: Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit. Göttingen Vandenhoek und Ruprecht. p. 328.
- Rouche, Michel (1987). "Private life conquers state and society", in Paul Veyne: A History of Private Life, Vol. I. Harvard University Press, 432. ISBN 0-674-39974-9.
