Yule

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Yule
Burning Sun Wheel at Jul (Germany 2005)
Official name	Yule
Also called	Jul, Joul, Juletid, Yuletide
Observed by	Christians, Neopagans, Wiccans and non-religious.
Type	A pre-Christian winter festival that has been incorporated into Christmas.
Date	December 25. Neopagans celebrate on December 21 or December 22.
Related to	Christmas, Winter Solstice, Koleda

Yule is a winter festival celebrated in Northern Europe since ancient times. In pre-Christian times, Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian and Germanic pagans celebrated Yule in late December or early January on a date determined by a lunar calendar.^[1] With the coming of Christianity and the adoption of the Julian calendar, Yule was placed on December 25 in order to correspond with Christmas.^[2] The terms "Yule" (Joul) and "Christmas" are often used interchangeably^{[citation needed]}, especially in Christmas carols. In Denmark, Norway and Sweden the term jul is the most common way to refer to the celebration, including among Christians. In Finland, Christmas is called joulu, in Estonia jõulud, and in Iceland and the Faroe Islands jól.

Yule is an important festival for modern Wiccans and other Neopagans, who observe the holiday on the winter solstice (December 21 or 22 in the Northern Hemisphere, June 20 or 21 in the Southern Hemisphere).

Contents 1 Etymology 2 Traditional Yule 3 Connection to modern Christmas 4 Neopaganism 4.1 Germanic neopaganism 4.2 Wicca 5 References 6 See also 7 External links

[edit] Etymology

Of the contested origin of Jól, one popular connection is to Old Norse hjól, wheel, to identify the moment when the wheel of the year is at its low point, ready to rise again (compare karachun). This theory however seems based more on similarities between the words "jul" and "hjul" (with a mute h) in modern Scandinavian languages, rather than any connection based on older cognates or historical sources. Linguists suggest that Jól has been inherited by Germanic languages from a pre-Indo-European substrate language and either borrowed into Old English from Old Norse or directly inherited from Proto-Germanic.^{[citation needed]} Considering the original Old English form Geohhol, another suggestion connects the word to Latin jocus, however this is uncertain.^[3]

In the Scandinavian Germanic languages, the term Jul covers both Yule and Christmas, and is also occasionally used to denote other holidays in December, e.g., "jødisk jul" or "judisk jul" (tr. "Jewish Yule") for Hanukkah. The word "jul" has also been borrowed into the neighboring Finnic languages, most notably to Finnish and Estonian (where it has been modified to "joulu" and "jõul", respectively, and denotes Christmas in modern usage), although the Finnic languages have a linguistic origin different from Germanic languages. In Old English, geóla[1] originally referred to the month of December; although the ancient Anglo-Saxon calendar had two "tides" of 60 day periods: "Litha Tide", roughly equivalent to modern June and July, and "Giuli Tide", being essentially December and January (the remaining months of the year were lunar, 29 day periods--the New Year began with the second half of that tide, also known as "Wulfmonath"). There was also a period of time, twelve days, intercalary between the two halves--or "monaths"--the which becoming the traditional Twelve Days of Christmas. The definition later narrowed to mean Christmas day only, with the returning of the Latin-based calendar--via the Normans--over time in Christian Norman and Anglo-Saxon England.

[edit] Traditional 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. [2] 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".[3]

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" (Rouche 1987, p. 432).

[edit] Connection to modern Christmas

Many of the symbols and motifs associated with the modern holiday of Christmas are derived from traditional pagan northern European Yule celebrations. The burning of the Yule log, the decorating of Christmas trees, the eating of ham, the hanging of boughs, holly, mistletoe, etc. are all historically practices associated with Yule. When the Christianization of the Germanic peoples began, missionaries found it convenient to provide a Christian reinterpretation of popular pagan holidays such as Yule and allow the celebrations themselves to go on largely unchanged, versus trying to confront and suppress them. The Scandinavian tradition of slaughtering a pig at Christmas (see Christmas ham) is probably salient evidence of this. The tradition is thought to be derived from the sacrifice of boars to the god Freyr at the Yule celebrations. Halloween and Easter are likewise assimilated from northern European pagan festivals.

English historian Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum ("Ecclesiastic History of the English People") contains a letter from Pope Gregory I to Saint Mellitus, who was then on his way to England to conduct missionary work among the pagan Anglo-Saxons. Pope Gregory suggested that converting heathens would go easier if they were allowed to retain the outward forms of their traditional pagan practices and traditions, while recasting those traditions spiritually towards the Christian God instead of to their pagan "devils": "to the end that, whilst some gratifications are outwardly permitted them, they may the more easily consent to the inward consolations of the grace of God". [4]

[edit] Neopaganism

As forms of Neopaganism can be quite different and have very different origins, these representations can vary considerably despite the shared name. Some celebrate in a manner as close as possible to how they believe that the Ancient Germanic pagans observed the tradition, while others observe the holiday with rituals culled from numerous other unrelated sources, Germanic culture being only one of the sources used.

[edit] Germanic neopaganism

In Germanic Neopagan sects, Yule is celebrated with gatherings that often involve a meal and gift giving. Further attempts at reconstruction of surviving accounts of historical celebrations are often made, a hallmark being variations of the traditional. However it has been pointed out that this is not really reconstruction as these traditions never died out - they have merely removed the superficial Christian elements from the celebrations blót.

Groups such as the Asatru Folk Assembly in the US recognize the celebration as lasting for 12 days, beginning on the date of the winter solstice. [5]

[edit] Wicca

In general, many Wiccan based sects favor a plethora of sources on winter solstice holidays to recreate a type of "Yule" holiday. While the name "Yule" is used, it is not an absolute reconstruction of the original holiday. Wreaths, Yule logs, decoration of trees, decorating with mistletoe, holly, and ivy, exchanges of presents, and even wassailing are incorporated and regarded as sacred. The return of the Sun as Frey is commemorated in some groups. However, due to the eclectic nature of modern Wicca, many solstice narratives from outside mythologies are incorporated or even substituted.

In some Wiccan sects the holiday is observed in a manner that commemorates the death of the Holly King identified with the wren bird (symbolizing the old year and the shortened sun) at the hands of his son and successor, the robin redbreast Oak King (the new year and the new sun that begins to grow) (Farrar & Farrar [1989] 1998: 35-38). In most Wiccan sects, this holiday is also celebrated as the rebirth of the Great God, who is viewed as the newborn solstice sun.

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• Christmas
• Swedish festivities
• Winter Solstice (Disambiguation)
• Winter Solstice Celebration
• Yule log
• Yalda

[edit] External links

• Stone, John Robert, Observing Bede's Anglo-Saxon Calendar