Yule - The Magic of Winter

During my teenage years, I found Christmas an essentially commercial, empty festivity: a façade of joy and dazzling lights on a crumbling building, dark and cold. The hyperbole of our society, where everything looks beautiful thanks to Instagram filters and by filling our inner emptiness with shopping carts full of consumer goods.

At an older age, however, I found myself appreciating more this celebration, having learned the arcane meaning behind it: the Winter Solstice. The triumph of the Sun over the darkness, celebrated for millennia by many peoples.

And it is there that the songs in the streets and shops, the lights in the windows and the glittering decorations on the tree echo with ancient laughter, joys and gifts exchanged by the light of fires lit during the long night.


Astronomically speaking, the winter solstice represents the moment in which the Sun reaches, in its apparent motion, the lowest point on the horizon, and then begins to rise in its path up to the highest point (the summer solstice) . This lack of light and warmth, led to the birth of many legends and festivities, linked to this suggestive moment of the year.

Two main themes recur: the darkness, the real heart of the cold season, often represented as an elderly figure, and the light, reborn after the longest night.

For the Neopagans, the solstice represents Yule, the first sabbatical feast of the year: the Goddess gives life to the God, the child Sun, who carries with him the promise of a warm spring. The name of the festival derives from the feast of Juul, a blot celebrated in pre-Christian Scandinavia. It was a moment of joy, of recollection but also of sacrifice: we must remember that, while today we are accustomed to our weekly shopping at the supermarket downtown, winter represented a season of famine for our ancestors. It was customary to sacrifice the flocks to the gods, thus ingratiating their favour, eating the meat with their loved ones and avoiding a death of hardships to livestock during the harsh winter.

From Northern Europe, we have inherited some of today's traditions such as the Yule log and the Christmas tree, which is spontaneously associated with Yggdrasil, the axis mundi.

 According to the legend, St. Boniface, who christianised Saxony and Friesland, on his way back to Rome, had a large oak tree cut, a tree sacred to the local pagans.
From the roots of the oak, a fir tree was born magically and St. Boniface interpreted this event as a divine sign, representing the goodness of Christianity.
However evergreen trees were known, in the pagan tradition, to bring prosperity and resistance during the winter season and for this they were taken to homes and hung to attract good luck.
It goes without saying that a sign of this kind should be interpreted as paganism (the fir tree) resisting the obscurantism of Christianity (the oak, which in the cold season loses its leaves).
The evergreens were also the sacred trees to the god Baal, a solar deity

Another tradition linked to evergreens is the "Yule log", known also as the "Christmas log". Usually it is a very large log, lit in the fireplace on the evening of Christmas Eve and meant to be burn up to the Epiphany.
By tradition, it helps driving away the evil spirits that roam the earth during the Solstice and serve to "strengthen" the life force of the Sun, which at this time of the year is weaker.

Even the famous figure of Santa Claus is of Scandinavian derivation: before being associated with the chubby bearded man we all know, he was portrayed as a very tall old man, dressed in black on horseback. A figure far from reassuring and good-natured, compared to that on the bottle of Coca Cola.
This spectral figure was associated with Odin and his horse.
During the longest night of the year, Odin kept a hunt (the Wild Hunt) along with other deities and spirits. The children in the villages used to put their boots out of the door, full of vegetables to feed the hunters' horses; in return they found the shoes full of gifts.

A somewhat more modern conception of Santa Claus, which helped to spread the tradition all over the world, is the one described in Clement C. Moore's poem "The Night before Christmas", published for the first time in 1823.

Inspired by various legends related to Santa Claus, Moore wrote this poem in which Santa Claus is described but as a small elf, fast and old, so minute to enter the houses through the chimneys, which he reached by flying over the roofs in his small sled , towed by eight reindeer. This little elf is called St. Nick.
For fans of ancient Anglo-Saxon traditions, the approach of St. Nick with Old Nick, one of the many names used to refer to the Devil, will not have escaped.

Similar concepts, put in the shade by the now-ubiquitous Santa, are found in various interpretations around Europe (see Befana, St Lucy, St Nick and the Three Kings just to name a few).

*** Click here to read our article on Krampus, the Wild Hunt and other winter traditions.

The rebirth of the sun during the winter solstice period is a theme common to many pagan traditions, so much so that the emperor Aureliano established on December 25th "dies natalis Solis invicti", thus giving to all the different cultures present in the Empire Roman a common day to celebrate the glory of the Sun.

Also in this period, in Ancient Rome, the Saturnalia were celebrated between 17th and 23rd December. As it can be easily deduced from the name, they were festivals in honour of the god Saturn: it was custom, during these days, to exchange small gifts and illuminate the cities by day - other traditions certainly familiar to us. It was believed that the old god, out of the Underworld, was hovering over our dimensional plane, bringing with him the spirits of the deads; in order to make them find the road to the Underworld again, sacrifices were offered, songs were sung, fires were lit and people dressed up.

Moreover, the usual social order was not in force: the slaves were free, joining their masters in the celebrations held during the lavish banquets in honour of Saturn.

*** Click here to read our article on the Mundus Cereris, the opening of the Underworld according to the Roman tradition.

The recurring theme is always the same: the "old" that brings the "new", the old and wise darkness that slowly gives way to the light, to the hope of a new year and a new harvest.

Nowadays, we must not worry more about famines and about sharing the harvest with the people we love. We live in an abundant world, full of possibilities. So full to become redundant with it, to the point of losing the sense of joy in being together with those we love, overcoming the darkness.

Let us remember the meaning behind the glitter, behind those gifts bought without feeling and unfailingly recycled. The Solstice is the time to be grateful for what we have received during the year, to be aware of what we have learned during our descent into darkness and to take a new path into the light.

Let us be grateful for the ties we can cultivate around a laid table, be it our blood family or our family of choice. And if we really do not know how to spend our money, let us not buy junk that will end up in the trash: we can use our power to help those who do not have the same luxury.

The Solstice is a festivity linked to joy of the home, the Earth is our home. Let us give us the gift to help her, let us give our money to the associations that take care to protect the environment or people in need. And if we really can not use the money, we can use our time: we can volunteer ourselves, collecting the trash from the beaches and the ground, we give what we do not need to those who can use it.

The greatest gift is to be aware, for ourselves and for those around us.

Happy and prosperous Solstice.

♃Ludna & ♄Unornya

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