YULE ñ THE WINTER SOLSTICE



After Samhain and Beltane, Yule is the most important feast. Elaborate rites are 
performed to insure the rebirth of the Sun. It is the greatest crisis of the 
year, and before the commercial value of sentimentality was discovered, popular 
customs reflected a wide contrast of the dark and eerie against joyful music and 
glittering lights.

Samhain to Yule is a season of preparation. A fast is not exactly enjoined, but 
it is as good a time as any to lose a little weight, because you'll surely gain 
it back during Yule. It is a time for serious introspection and spiritual 
discipline. Perform your devotions and meditations regularly. Just before Yule, 
thoroughly clean your home.

The celebration begins on Yule Eve with religious rites. Yule Day is for family 
observances of a cheerful, social nature, with a feast, perhaps in the evening, 
unless there is a ball or theater event. The next day is a peculiar time. It is 
the day left over in the old Pagan calendar of thirteen 28-day months. It 
belongs to no month and no year; truly a "time that is not time". (On a leap 
year there are two of these intercalary days.) what is done on the third day, 
then, hasn't really happened, or doesn't count. It gives us a perfect 
opportunity to step outside our usual roles and experiment, even if we look 
foolish. No one is allowed to hold it against us. No commitments can be made of 
this day; they will not be binding.

The next day is the New Year from a solar point of view.

The season of Yule runs till the Eve of Oimelc, so for Pagans there is no post-
Xmas letdown. You can have Yule parties every weekend till February. When your 
evergreen decorations dry up, you can renew them. But by Oimelc, every trace of 
the Yule greens must be out of the house. It is pleasant to burn them in your 
fireplace.

THEMES

Growth in the vegetable kingdom is at a standstill. Animals that neither 
hibernate nor migrate have a hard time finding food. Many will die before 
spring. Agriculture makes no demands and farmers devote themselves to 
handicrafts and cultivating learning the arts.

December 26 is a feast of Woden ñ St. Stephen in the Xian calendar. Balder, the 
Norse Sun God, killed by a dart of mistletow because of the treachery of Loke. 
He is reborn of the Goddess Freya.

The Sun, in many personifications, dies and is reborn. In the Morris play, the 
Fool (a solar figure) is beheaded in a sword dance, and magically revived in one 
of various ways ñ by Father Christmas with the mistletoe, by being concealed for 
a moment under the voluminous skirt of the Betty (a Great Goddess figure much 
decayed), etc.

PURPOSE OF THE RITES

To revive the dead or dying Sun.

FOLK CUSTOMS

All Xmas customs, and most Xmas music, of any antiquity at all belong to the 
Pagan feast of Yule. Moreover, customs attached to the Yuletide constellation of 
Saints' Days: Stephen, Basil, Nicholas, Lucia, Barbara, Sylvester and Epiphany, 
derive almost entirely from Yule. There is an unbelievable richness of customs 
concerning food, fires, plants, animals, wild birds, poultry, stars, mummers, 
music, magic, clothing, demons, goblins, angels, social roles, gifts, lights, 
auguries, and so on endlessly. Suffice to say that the figure of Dionysos, 
newborn of Demeter or Persephone, lying swaddling on a bed of straw in a liknos 
or harvest-basket on the threshing floor, his head surrounded by a golden 
nimbus, looks exactly like the Christ-child in the crËche and evokes the same 
feelings of love and mystery in his worshippers as the baby Jesus does in 
Xians.

SYMBOLIC DECORATIONS

Are as seen at Xmas, barring cheap modern gimcracks. It has been said that the 
true colors of Yule are not red and green, however, but black and gold ñ black 
of utter darkness and gold of the Sun. if you want your Yule tree to be more 
distinctly Pagan, top it with a gold sunburst and decorate it with miniatures of 
Pagan symbols, with the horses, golden roosters, and phoenixes of the Sun, 
animals, birds, straw figures, a bird's nest for hope of Spring, strings of 
grains, nuts, sugarplums and ships. I've found that candles on the tree are not 
all the troublesome or hazardous if you stay awake in the room with the tree 
when it's lighted, and the effect is unearthly beautiful.

In general, decorate with masses of evergreens and a lot of shiny things.

SOCIAL ACTIVITIES

Wassail parties, caroling, children's parties, winter sports, sleigh rides, 
family dinners, much visiting and hospitality.

THE RITE

As you gather for the rite, share a light snack. The Swedish Xmas Eve custom of 
eating dark bread dipped in the broth in which the Xmas meats are simmering 
would go well here, as a relic of an ancient communion rite. Go very easy on 
alcohol and eat just a little to sustain you through the rite.

Takes place indoors on the Eve. It may be times to climax at midnight. HP and 
HPS may dress in white gowns. His headdress is wreathed with holly and has a 
candle fixed between the horns. HPS wears a crown of 9 white candles, wreathed 
with ivy. The others can wear wreaths of holly for the men and ivy for the 
women. Golden jewelry can be worn.

Have a fire laid ready in the Cauldron in the center, the wood doused with 
seasonally-scented lamp oil. Bank fragrant evergreen boughs around the cauldron. 
Place the Yule tree just outside the Circle at the East. Set the altar in the 
North, draped with white or dark green. Set five golden (like the metal) candles 
in a ring, within a wreath of the mistletoe. Across the front of the altar, 
line up one white candle for each covener beside the two high officers.

Begin the rite in near total darkness. Banish with salt. During a silent 
meditation, let the silence be interrupted with strange, harsh sound and weird 
apparitions in the fitful light ñ made by the coveners' friends and children, 
who will later join the feast. After HP invokes the Sun-god, he begins kindling 
the fire. From that point on the light spreads to the candle-crown of the HPS, 
to HP's headdress, to the tree and all the lamps in the Circle, to the candles 
of the coveners who walk singing through the house bringing light into every 
room and joined by guests and members of the household.

A verse for the charging of the fire: "As the flame grows this night, so shall 
the young sun grow till Midsummer".

Coveners receive communion while standing holding their candles. It should 
consist of spiced wine and a very small plum pudding of the Pentacle. HPS first 
pours flaming brandy over it, then HP divides it with his knife into morsels.

Ritual of Return to Earth:

A small tray of dead and dried plants, cut in short pieces ñ the detrirus of the 
harvest, not the useful or productive parts of the plants ñ is identified as 
representing habits and modes of thought that we have found to be worn-out and 
useless. Each individual has particularized these for himself of a small slip of 
paper. The plant material is buried in the pot of earth at the North, and the 
slips are burned in the fire.

After this serious moment, we get on with the serious merrymakeing. An intense 
blaze of light has been achieved. Now the surplus candles may be extinguished 
and the headdresses may be removed for comfort. Some may go caroling, but 
please, only if they've rehearsed. Small, personal gifts may be exchanged, 
preferably home-made. The HP is our "Santa Claus". End the rite as usual.