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Liber XXXV · Witchcraft & Wicca

Liber XXXV · Witchcraft & Wicca · Chapter VI: The Wheel of the Year

Yule: History, Folklore and Modern Pagan Celebration

Yule explained: the Germanic midwinter feast in Bede and the sagas, its links with Christmas and Saturnalia, Yule logs, folk customs and modern Pagan Yule.

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Yule is the midwinter festival of the Germanic-speaking peoples, known in Old English as Geol and in Old Norse as jól, which later became a name for Christmas in English and the Scandinavian languages. Bede and the Icelandic sagas give glimpses of a pre-Christian midwinter feast, and many seasonal customs, from the Yule log to wassailing, gathered around it in later centuries. Modern Pagans celebrate Yule at the winter solstice, around 21 December, as the rebirth of the sun and one of the eight sabbats of the Wheel of the Year.

The Words Yule and Jól: Origins and Meaning§

The word appears in several early Germanic languages. A fragment of a Gothic calendar from the sixth century names a month fruma jiuleis, probably November, "before Yule". Old English had geola and geol, Old Norse jól, a plural noun meaning a feast lasting several days. The ultimate etymology is unknown; proposals linking it to "wheel" or to a word for festivity are speculative.

After the conversion the old word did not disappear. In the Scandinavian languages jul and Icelandic jól simply mean Christmas, and in English "Yule" and "Yuletide" survived as poetic and regional terms for the Christmas season. The modern Pagan use of "Yule" for the winter solstice festival therefore revives an old word with a long Christian history in between. The wider seasonal calendar is set out in the Wheel of the Year.

Midwinter in the Pagan North: Bede, Snorri and the Jól Feast§

The earliest English evidence is in Bede's The Reckoning of Time (725). Describing the old English months, he says that December and January were together called Giuli, distinguished as "before" and "after" Yule, and that the year began on 25 December, which the pagans called Modranecht, "Mothers' Night", because of ceremonies held through that night. Bede does not say what the ceremonies were. Scholars have connected the "mothers" with the Germanic and Celtic Matronae or with female ancestral spirits, but this is inference.

For Scandinavia the main source is Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla, written in Iceland around 1230. In the saga of Hákon the Good, king of Norway in the mid-tenth century, Snorri reports that Hákon, raised a Christian in England, decreed that jól should be held at the same time as Christmas, whereas previously it had begun on "Hǫku night" and lasted three nights. Snorri also describes the great sacrificial feasts of the farmers at Hlaðir and Mære, where animals were slaughtered, the meat boiled in the hall, and toasts drunk to Odin, Njörðr and Freyr for victory, good harvests and peace. Other saga and skaldic references speak of "drinking Yule".

These accounts were written by Christian authors two or three centuries after the events and must be used carefully. They show that midwinter was a major time of feasting and sacrifice, but not exactly when the feast fell, nor whether it was tied to the solstice. Wider context is given in Norse and Germanic religion and Odin.

Christmas, Saturnalia and the Date of 25 December§

The Christian feast of Christ's birth on 25 December is first securely attested in a Roman calendar of the year 354, reflecting practice by 336. The same calendar marks 25 December as the birthday of Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun, and the Roman Saturnalia, a popular festival of feasting, gift-giving and role reversal, ran from 17 December for several days.

Two explanations of the Christmas date are debated. The older, the "history of religions" theory, holds that the Church chose 25 December to replace or Christianise the solar festival. The "calculation" theory, argued by Thomas Talley and others, holds that early Christians reached the date by calculating from 25 March, which they regarded as the date of the conception and of the crucifixion. Both factors may have played a part, and neither has won universal agreement.

In the Germanic north, Christmas and the older jól fell close together and merged, which is why the same word came to describe both. Customs of feasting, drinking and gift-giving passed easily between them, and later folklorists often treated every Christmas custom as a pagan survival. Historians such as Ronald Hutton have shown that most such customs are recorded only from the later Middle Ages or after, and that their origins are usually impossible to trace with confidence.

Yule Folk Customs: Logs, Evergreens, Wassail and the Twelve Days§

The season of the Twelve Days of Christmas, from 25 December to Twelfth Night, gathered a rich body of custom in Britain and elsewhere:

  • The Yule log. A large log or block was brought into the house and burned on the hearth over Christmas, with a fragment sometimes kept to light the next year's log or to protect the house. In England it is first clearly recorded in the seventeenth century, in the poems of Robert Herrick; similar customs existed in France and the Balkans, where the Serbian badnjak is an oak branch burned on Christmas Eve. The chocolate bûche de Noël is a nineteenth-century French confection.
  • Evergreens. Late medieval churchwardens' accounts in England record payments for holly and ivy to decorate churches at Christmas. Mistletoe, which Pliny linked with the Gaulish Druids (see mistletoe and the Druids), is first recorded as a kissing custom in the eighteenth century.
  • Wassailing. Groups went from house to house with a bowl of spiced ale, and in cider-making counties of western England orchards were "wassailed" on Twelfth Night with songs, noise and toast placed in the branches to ensure a good crop.
  • Misrule and mumming. Lords of Misrule presided over revels in great households and colleges, and mummers performed plays from house to house. In Wales the Mari Lwyd, a horse's skull carried on a pole, visited homes for a contest of verses.
  • The Christmas tree. Decorated trees are recorded among German guilds and households from the sixteenth century. They reached Britain with the German-born royal family and became widely fashionable after an engraving of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's tree was published in 1848.

Puritan reformers attacked many of these festivities, and Parliament abolished the celebration of Christmas in the 1640s; the feast returned with the Restoration in 1660. Victorian writers, above all Charles Dickens, reshaped Christmas into the domestic, child-centred festival familiar today.

Yule in Scandinavian and Germanic Folklore§

Northern European midwinter folklore has its own cast of figures, several of which modern Heathens and Pagans have adopted:

  • The Yule goat. The Scandinavian julbock or julebukk was a goat figure, sometimes a costumed person, who went from house to house; today it is best known as a straw ornament.
  • The Wild Hunt. In German and Scandinavian legend a host of the dead rode through the winter sky, often led by a figure identified with Odin; nineteenth-century scholars such as Jacob Grimm made the connection central to their reconstruction of Germanic myth.
  • Household spirits. The Scandinavian tomte or nisse, a farm guardian, was given porridge at Christmas, and Icelandic tradition knows the troll-woman Grýla and her sons, the Yule Lads.
  • Yule ale and oaths. Saga literature mentions vows made over the cup at Yule, the inspiration for the toasting ritual called sumbel in modern Heathenry.

Yule and the Winter Solstice in Modern Paganism§

For most modern Pagans Yule is the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, around 21 December in the northern hemisphere and 21 June in the southern. Ancient monuments aligned on the midwinter sun, such as the passage tomb of Newgrange in Ireland, built around 3200 BCE, whose chamber is lit by the rising sun at the solstice, and Stonehenge, oriented on the midwinter sunset and midsummer sunrise, give the festival a powerful visual focus, though the beliefs of their builders are unknown.

In Wicca Yule is one of the four "lesser sabbats" added to the calendar in the late 1950s. It celebrates the rebirth of the sun, often imagined as the Goddess giving birth to the Sun Child or Divine Child, and in many covens the battle between the Oak King and the Holly King, a seasonal myth adapted from Robert Graves and popularised by Janet and Stewart Farrar. Candles, evergreens and a Yule log are common features of the rite.

Heathens generally treat Yule as the most important feast of the year. Some keep it as twelve nights, open with Mōdraniht in honour of the female ancestors and household spirits, and hold blót and sumbel to the gods, as described in Heathenry and the runes. Druids greet the solstice sunrise at sacred sites, and many Pagan families combine Yule with secular or Christian Christmas customs.

Frequently asked questions§

Is Yule the same as Christmas?§

In English and the Scandinavian languages "Yule" became a name for Christmas, and the two festivals merged in the Middle Ages. Modern Pagans use Yule for their own midwinter festival at the solstice, which is distinct from the Christian feast of Christ's birth.

When is Yule celebrated?§

Modern Pagans usually celebrate Yule at the winter solstice, around 20–22 December in the northern hemisphere. Historically the Norse jól may have fallen at a different point in midwinter, and after Hákon the Good it was aligned with Christmas on 25 December.

Is the Yule log pagan?§

The Yule log is first clearly recorded in England in the seventeenth century, with comparable customs in France and the Balkans. It may continue older midwinter fire customs, but there is no direct evidence linking it to pre-Christian religion.

What is Mothers' Night?§

Bede recorded that the pagan English began their year on 25 December, a night they called Modranecht, "Mothers' Night". He gives no details, and modern Heathens who keep the night honour female ancestors and protective spirits on the basis of scholarly inference.

Sources and further reading§