At the winter solstice the sun stands still at the bottom of the year and then, almost imperceptibly, begins to climb. Yule is the feast of that turning: the rebirth of the light.
On the shortest day in the Welsh Marches the sun is above the horizon for a little under eight hours, and low when it is. For some days around the solstice it seems to rise and set in the same place, and the word solstice means exactly that: the sun standing still. Then the days begin to lengthen, at first by seconds.
History and folklore
Yule is one of the oldest words in the language. The Anglo-Saxons called the midwinter season Geola, and their Norse cousins called it Jol, and both kept it with feasting. Bede, writing in the eighth century, recorded that the pagan English began their year on the night of the twenty-fifth of December, which they called Mothers' Night. Long before any of them, the builders of the great stone monuments of these islands had aligned some of their works on the midwinter sun.
Most of what we think of as the customs of Christmas are customs of midwinter, and the Church was wise enough to let them be. The Yule log was brought in with ceremony and kept burning through the feast, and a piece of it was saved to light the next year's. Houses were dressed with holly, ivy and mistletoe, the plants that stay green and bear fruit when everything else is bare. In the cider counties, in the first weeks of January, people went out at night to wassail the apple trees: to sing to them, pour cider on their roots, and make a great noise to drive off harm and secure next year's crop.
Yule in the Craft
Yule is the festival of the sun's rebirth. In the story of the year, the Goddess gives birth at midwinter to the child who is the returning light. The rite is one of kindling: a fire or a candle lit in the dark, and a dance about it to help the sun to turn. Gerald Gardner described such a rite in Witchcraft Today.
Some covens tell at this season of the Oak King and the Holly King, two rivals who rule the waxing and the waning halves of the year and overthrow one another at the solstices. The image comes from the poet Robert Graves and entered the Craft some time after Gardner. It is not part of the original rites, but a good many witches are fond of it.
The meaning of the festival is plain enough. It is kept at the darkest of the year, when the worst of the cold is still to come, and it celebrates nothing more than a promise. The light will return. It always has.
How our coven keeps it
- The room is dark when we begin, and the first light is a single candle lit from the stub of the one we used the year before.
- An oak log from the hill is burned in the hearth of the house, and a charred piece of it is put by for next Yule.
- We give one another small presents, which by rule must be made and not bought.
- Those who can manage it climb Cythrawl before dawn on the morning after the longest night, to see the sun come up.
- On the old Twelfth Night in January we wassail the apple trees in the orchard below the hill, with cider, toast and a great deal of noise.
Keeping it yourself
- Find out the time of sunrise and sunset on the solstice where you live, and see both.
- Bring in evergreens, and learn which is which.
- Sit for a while in a room with no light at all. Then light one candle.
- Burn a log, if you have a fire, and keep a piece.
- Stay up late with people you love, and eat well. That is what the feast has always been for.