Our Christian friends are often quite surprised at how enthusiastically
we Pagans celebrate the 'Christmas' season. Even though we prefer to
use the word 'Yule', and our celebrations may peak a few days BEFORE
the 25th, we nonetheless follow many of the traditional customs of
the season: decorated trees, carolling, presents, Yule logs, and
mistletoe. We might even go so far as putting up a 'Nativity set',
though for us the three central characters are likely to be
interpreted as Mother Nature, Father Time, and the Baby Sun-God. None
of this will come as a surprise to anyone who knows the true history
of the holiday, of course.
In fact, if truth be known,the holiday of Christmas has always been
more Pagan than Christian, with it's associations of Nordic
divination, 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's 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
carolling, 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 witha long-overdue
paraphrase, 'Goddess bless us, every one!'