Yuletide Greetings!
© Christy Huelsenbeck
Yule is the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. The Solstice falls between December 20-23. On this day the sun is reborn. The Goddess gives birth to the infant Sun and his light begins to overtake the dark. From this day onward the days lengthen and the nights shorten.
This is always my favorite time of the year. It seems that the energies of peace, love and giving are truly alive and flowing through us. The strong energies of rebirth bring hope and joy that even in the darkest of seasons and times reminds us life is renewing itself.
As sabbats are solar/fire festivals Yule is no different. The tradition of the Yulelog burning merrily in the fireplace is simply the bringing of the Sabbat fire indoors to escape the outside cold. It was traditional to scatter the ashes of the Yule log over the fields, or of keeping its charred remains to bind in the last sheaf of the following harvest. Many people these days don't have a fireplace, or a garden to harvest. If you still wish to celebrate it's easy!
Find a log of ample length. Keep to a traditional sized piece that would fit in a fireplace grate. Boar three holes in the top big enough to place taper candles in. Good candle choices would be red for the color of birth and the Goddess, gold or yellow for the light of the sun and the God, and white for the purity of the newborn and for the season of snow and ice. Place the white candle in the middle, red to left and gold to right. You can place a bit of glue in the holes to hold them tight. Decorate the log with seasonal greenery (watch it when the candles are lit), and place it in the middle of your altar. Every year my coven would hold our ritual in the room that had a tree lit up. We would place our gifts for each other underneath and open them during the Simple Feast ceremony. This was a wonderful way to end the ritual. At times we would have a feast earlier in the day to make it an all day affair.
Christmas is, simply put, a masked over pagan holiday. The birth of Christ was actually in the spring. It wasn't until 273 A.D. that the Church took the step to bring it in alignment with the other Sun Gods who were all born at Winter Solstice. St. Augustine acknowledged the festival's solar meaning when he urged Christians to celebrate it for 'him who made the Sun, rather than the Sun itself'.
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