Imagine you lived hundreds of years ago under conditions that make even our more impoverished citizens lives almost luxury! Winter would not be a pleasant time. Especially if you lived in northern Europe. So these folks tended to watch the progress of the sun very closely. Their very lives depended on it since they lived off simple agriculture and hunting/gathering, all dependent on the seasons.
Most now say the giant monument of Stonehenge was a form of observatory to track the sun’s progress. Newgrange, another ancient monument, shows a beam of light within only on a solstice. So for some of our ancestors, the day the sun was at its nmost distant and then turned to come back for summer was a key one! Most of these people personifed the sun as a deity and worshipped it. So large celebrations grew up around this holiday, marked as most were and some still are from sunset to sunset.
Mistletoe, the Yule log, feasting, merriment and sometimes even exchanging gifts became part of this festival. Candles and bonfires and almost anything to represent the heat and light of the sun were featured–we may call this sympathetic or homeopathic magic, an effort to placate that distant brilliance and persuade it to return! As you can see, a lot of these pagan customs wiggled their way into the ‘new’ religion of Christianity and now make part of our Christmas tradition despite those roots. But for pagans, these tradtions are still a real and understood part of their spiritual beliefs and hold special meaning. Anyone know of a book about this celebration and Yuletide? Please share! I am sure some of our authors who make Celtic history and prehistory their environment must have some and I’d love to read them!
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