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ALBAN ARTHAN
WINTER SOLSTICE - YULE :
FACTS AND MISINFORMATION
The Yule season of December 21-22 each year is
unique. It includes:
A Pagan Sabbat: Yule, usually celebrated on or near
the evening of December 21-22. Mainly celebrated by Neo-Pagans
A Christian holy day: Christmas on Dec 25
A Welsh festival: Gwyl Canol Gaeof, Alban Arthan,
which Begins Sundown, December 21 (day before Solstice.) Day of the Yew, Mistletoe,
Palm and Silver Fir. Birth of the Sun God; the Divine Child.
Georgia Pagans -Witches & Druids celebrate Yule in different ways.
Yule is the time when the Sun is closest to the
Earth. This also results in the longest night of the year, north of the
equator. Read the following information and then go to the links to arm yourself
with true information favorable to Pagans everywhere.
GWYL CANOL GAEAF
By D. Earnest
The following contains elements of a work
authored by Mike Nichols, a Welsh Witch from K.C., Missouri. Go to: http://www.sacred-texts.com/bos/bos036.htm
for the original text. June, 2002
GENERAL INFORMATION
Gwyl Canol Gaeaf or Yule: December
21-23 (the Winter Solstice) is the
festival of the Divine King's death and rebirth. This is the time which marks the
vanquishing of the Holly King, the God of the waning year, by the Oak king, God of the
waxing year. At this season the powers of light (Oak King) grow strong as they battle the
powers of darkness (Holly King). Each clan elects a Shape Shifter whose job it
is to balance the festival of Gwyl Canol Gaef. At this time the White Goddess gives birth
to the Sun God, the child of promise, who will re-fertilize her and bring back the warmth
and light to the kingdom. The Oak King rules. Although
still young and weak, the days are getting longer now. This is the time for
family. The traditional solstice tree comes from German culture. It was
decorated with lights to encourage and honour the sun. The tinsel was significgant
to encourage the melting of the snow, and it was decorated with fruits of the last harvest
to give thanks and to ensure a bounty for the next planting season. Colours for this
sabbat: Green and Red. An oak log is prepared as
a Yule log to burn during the ritual. It is decorated with pine cones, holly and
mistletoe. The remains of the log are kept until the following year and are used to start
the new Yule log. The needfire is used to start the blaze. The altar and watchtowers are
decorated with seasonal colors and material: holly, pine cones, mistletoe, bayberries, and
evergreen boughs.Musil is prepared and
drunk by the participants. The Yule incense is prepared and lit. The participants may
exchange gifts, and after the ritual is over, may take pieces of the Yule decorations back
home to be used on their household altar.The High Priest and High
Priestess or Maiden shall set up the altar in the North of the Circle. They then light the
candles and the incense. The Cauldron shall be in the center of the Circle. The four
watchtower candles shall be placed at the perimeter of the Circle, E, S, W, N. The
entrance to the circle shall be to the Northeast. None shall enter or leave the circle
except by the northeast gateway. The High Priest shall
call in the watchtowers. Both are Inside the Circle as they cast it. The High Priest casts
the circle with the Rod, beginning in the East and proceeding Deosil thrice around the
Circle. The High Priest then places the Rod at the foot of the Altar. The Circle is then
consecrated (purified).
Long before Christianity developed in the Roman
Empire, the Sun was considered to represent the Male God of many Pagan Traditions.
Gwyl Canol Gaeaf celebrates the return of the Sun God, reborn of the Goddess. It
celebrates the arrival of the sun or son which also represents the light of the world.
Our tradition performs a ritual where the dark half of the
year fights a battle with the light half of the year. (Oak King vs the Holly King)
We also repeat this battle at Midsummer. These two battles mark the change of the
seasons as one wins over the other.
The Holly King rules the Waning year; the Oak King, the
Waxing Year. The two battle each other for dominance at Midsummers and Yule, respectively.
This rite is a symbolic reenactment of the sacrifice of a
young male of the tribe, to appease the gods who ruled the seasons. The Persian god
Mithra (also born at Midwinter), was a symbol of rejuvenation and light. In cold
climates, basic survival was based upon subsisting from one harvest to the next; honoring
the return of the sun was believed to ensure a bountiful crop, and healthy livestock. In
the British Isles (the birthplace of modern Witchcraft, and a region bursting with
centuries of religious conflict and mystery) many other rites and customs still exist that
reflect these "heathen" (heath-dweller, or country folk) ways of life.
The observance of the winter solstice was very
significant in ancient times. Since this date represented the moment when the days would
again become longer, when light would return to the land, the rural folk who faced lean
times in winter had reason to be thankful. The use of candles as decorations and ritual
objects, dating from ancient times, clearly indicates the importance of honoring the
deities of light. The sun's return meant spring was on its way,and with it, the birth of
new animals to the flock, and the softening of the soil tilled by our ancestors who lived
as animal herders and farmers. Their celebration of this date as a holy day, when they
worshipped and honored the sun as a deity, was an affirmation of their survival of the
cold months of winter. They subsisted on the dried meats of the animals they slaughtered
at Samhain, and what little produce they could preserve from the final harvest.
Some of our Christian friends are surprised at how
enthusiastically we celebrate the 'Christmas' season. We prefer to use the
word "Gwyl Canol Gaeaf" instead of Yule, and our festival is held a few days
before Christmas Day or the 25th, but we do follow many of the traditional customs of the
season: decorated trees, caroling, presents, Yule logs, and mistletoe. We might even
construct a 'Nativity scene'. But for us, the three characters portrayed would be
Mother Donn, Father Math, and the Baby Hu.
As everyone has heard I am sure, Christmas has always been more Pagan than Christian, with
it's associations of 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', there springs the new spark of hope,
the Sacred Fire, the Light of the World, the Coel Coeth.
That is why 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 and Saxons.
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! But if one wishes to use the New Testament as historical evidence, this reference
may point to sometime in the spring as the time of Jesus' birth. This is because the
lambing season occurs in the spring and that is the only time when shepherds are likely to
'watch their flocks by night' -- to make sure the lambing goes well. 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
caroling, 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 (1988) it occurs on December 21st at 9:28 am CST. 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 everlasting 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. (Magically -- not medicinally! 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. In doing so, we can share
many common customs with our Christian friends, albeit with a slightly different
interpretation. 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!'
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