OCC:Yule (a pagan's view of Christmas)  by Gwydion Cinhil Kirontin

   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, 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 his 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", here
springs the new spark of hope, the Sacred Fire, the Light of the World,
the Coel Coeth.

   That is why we 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.

   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 -- not even in those
climates! 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 it occurs on December 21st at 4:08 p.m.
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
ever- lasting 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. (Don't try it! 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. 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!"

   (This article came from a BBS that catered specifically to the
Occult. The BBS is no longer running, we wouldn't give the number out
if was.)
