Picture: “Julemiddag“. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Someone on a forum recently asked “When is Yule? I know the Scandinavians messed around with the dating, but is it a fixed date? I heard it depended on the weather.”
To which the answer is: not exactly, yes and no, and no. 😀
OK, let’s clear away the confusion about the weather. We have evidence for very few Heathen festivals in the pre-Christian era. Two we do know about occurred in the winter: Winter Nights and Yule. Of these, Winter Nights seems to have been celebrated when the weather changed to winter.Whenever that was. One winter in the UK I attended three Winter Nights celebrations, the first occurring in Scotland and the last in the south of England, as the weather progressively changed through our islands.
Right, enough about Winter Nights. Yule is a fixed date. Or set of dates. The main problem is that modern Heathens tend not to agree when Yule begins, and so different heathens may celebrate it on different dates. Another complication is that there is an argument about whether it should last for three or twelve days. If you put these variables together, we have the option of three different “fixed” starting dates for Yule – and six different finishing dates!
So, let’s get started! 😉
Mother’s Night
Most of you may never have heard of this. Effectively, this is the Heathen religion’s “Christmas Eve”. And this is the one there’s argument about. So, what are the possibilities?
- 11th December
- 12th December
- Solstice Eve
- Solstice
- Christmas Eve
- Christmas Day
Before we begin to get down to the detail of the arguments about those, here’s a wee bit of background:
We know Yule was celebrated by the pre-Christian Anglo Saxons because it is mentioned by the Christian monk Bede. At the time, there was a lot of discussion about how to calculate the Christian festival of Easter. Bede wrote a book about it in the 8th century. It’s an important book for a number of reasons – but for Heathens, it’s the only source we have about the pre-Christian lunar calendar. However, that apart, it tells us that the first day of Yule was called “Mothers’ Night” and was celebrated when the Christians celebrated Christmas.
In olden time the English people — for it did not seem fitting to me that I should speak of other nations’ observance of the year and yet be silent about my own nation’s — calculated their months according to the course of the moon. Hence, after the manner of the Greeks and the Romans, [the months] take their name from the moon, for the moon is called mona and the month monath.
The first month, which the Latins call January, is Giuli; February is called Solmonath; March, Hrethmonath; April, Eosturmonath; May, Thrimilchi; June, Litha; July, also Litha; August, Weodmonath; September, Halegmonath; October, Winterfilleth; November, Blodmonath; December, Giuli, the same name by which January is called. They began the year on the 8th kalends of January, when we celebrate the birth of the Lord. That very night, which we hold so sacred, they used to call by the heathen word Modranecht, that is, ‘mother’s night’, because (we suspect) of the ceremonies they enacted all that night.
…
The months of Giuli derive their name from the day when the sun turns back [and begins] to increase, because one of [these months] precedes [this day], and the other follows. …
From De ratione temporum (On the reckoning of time), chapter 15. Translation from here. This is the Latin about Mothers’ Night:
Incipiebant autem annum ab octavo Calendarum Januariarum die, ubi nunc natale Domini celebramus. Et ipsam noctem nunc nobis sacrosanctam, tunc gentili vocabulo Modranicht, id est, matrum noctem appellabant: ob causam et suspicamur ceremoniarum, quas in ea pervigiles agebant
Still with me? In that case, you will have noticed that Bede reckons time the way the ancient Romans did. If you want to translate 8 before Kalends of January for yourself, here are the tools. Or, if you want the fun version, you could try my blog here.
Dates are written in accordance with their position before the Nones, Ides, or Kalends. Hence typically the format is ante diem + [Roman numeral] + [Nones, Ides or Kalends] + [Month]
The same site tells us the Romans counted dates inclusively. Put it all together and that gives 25th December as 8 days (inclusive of both 25th Dec and 1st Jan) before the Kalends of January.
Here’s another question I’ve looked at on the past: “Doesn’t Christmas eve come from Bede after adjusting for the the change from the Julian to Gregorian calendars in the mid 1700s ?”
Bede lived 672/673 – 26 May 735, which is about 300 years after the church decided to use 25th December to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Back then, they used the Roman calendar created by Julius Caesar – the Julian calendar. The Julian calendar was superseded by the Gregorian calendar in 1582, because the Julian calendar had drifted too far from the solar year. At that time the difference in astronomical time for the same date between the two calendars was 10 days (“Give us back our ten days” was the cry in the streets when the calendar changed.) However, that time difference continues to widen, so the difference today between the Julian and Gregorian calendars is 14 days. So, if you wanted to use that form of reckoning (which I did in one of my books), then 25th December (Mothers’ Night) would occur on 12th December in 2015. Try it yourself here. 
“But I thought the Roman day began at midnight? So how do we get to Mothers’ Night being celebrated on Christmas Eve when Bede said it was Christmas Day?”
Well, Bede said it was celebrated “when we celebrate the birth of the Lord.” And those celebrations began at sunset the previous day. This would have come naturally to any Anglo Saxons who still reckoned time the old way, when months were calculated by the moon (in the way described by Bede). Back then, the day began at sunset and lasted until sunset the following night. Adopting the Roman calendar was a shock for more reasons than having fixed months and having to remember new names of months and how many days was in each. It also brought a new way of reckoning the start of the day – from a time most people had no means of calculating, from a time everyone with the gift of sight could see with their own eyes. I’m willing to bet that change took more than three generations to bed in. And, in case, there was at least one exception:
Christmas celebrations have long begun on the night of the 24th, due in part to the Christian liturgical day starting at sunset,[5] a practice inherited from Jewish tradition[6] and based on the story of Creation in the Book of Genesis: “And there was evening, and there was morning – the first day.”[7]
So that gives us Christmas Eve as the most likely day/time (in Bede’s day) when Mothers’ Night had been celebrated. And isn’t there a kind of pleasing symmetry about that: that the old religion in England moved from one kind of celebration of the gifts brought by mothers to a new kind? Let’s park the whole question of “who were the Mothers” for another blog, and stick to dating in this one.
“OK, so why do modern pagans use the solstice for Yule?”
Well, this is where things get a little tricky. As far as I can tell (any corrections welcome!) most eclectic pagans – i.e. not recons using entirely different festivals from their own pre-Christian religion – use the “Wheel of the Year” festivals created by Ross Nichols and Gerald Gardner in the 1950s. Oh, they drew on festivals from pre-Christian Celtic and Germanic religions, plus the equinoxes, but no one religion before Wicca and OBOD Druidry had used all of these festivals. And their usage spread out to other pagans over the years, either through the writings of Wiccan or OBOD Druid authors, or via organisations such as the Pagan Federation in the UK.
But Heathens tend not to separate Yule and Mothers’ Night. Mothers’ Night is always celebrated at night – for one thing, that’s wot Bede said (“this very night”) and, for another, the clue is in the name. 😉 so it tends to be celebrated as the start of Yule. Again, that follows Bede. What they don’t do, is follow Bede and align it with Christmas. Why?
One explanation you’ll see on websites for the change in date between Christmas Day back to the solstice is the change in calendar. But this won’t work, because there was an 11 day difference between the two calendars when England converted to the Gregorian calendar. Even had they converted when Gregory first proposed his calendar, there would have been that 10 day difference – not 12 days. A far more convincing argument is that the shift in dates comes from the Christianisation of Norway by King Haakon I.
Because England converted after only a couple of hundred years of being Heathen, very early documents or references to that pre-Christian Anglo Saxon religion have come down to us. Most was destroyed by the monks (who were the keepers of records). Scandinavia is in a different position, as it converted a few hundred years later. So we have the following:
the Saga of Hákon the Good credits King Haakon I of Norway with the Christianization of Norway as well as rescheduling the date of Yule to coincide with Christian celebrations held at the time. … In time, Haakon had a law passed establishing that Yule celebrations were to take place at the same time as the Christians celebrated Christmas, “and at that time everyone was to have ale for the celebration with a measure of grain, or else pay fines, and had to keep the holiday while the ale lasted.” Yule had previously been celebrated for three nights from midwinter night… [9]
In addition, we know that pre-Christian pagan religions elsewhere in Europe tended to hold Midwinter festivals, to coincide with the solstice. So it seems reasonable to assume that the pre-Christian Heathen Yule took place at the solstice among all Heathens (in Scandinavia, Germany, Frisia, England etc) and it began (in accordance with how lunar calendars reckon time) at sunset. However, there is (as far as I know) no reference in what we have of continental Heathen sources, to the Mothers’ Night celebrated in England.
So the only dispute lies between those who celebrate Mothers Night on the evening before Yule, or the evening of Yule. Given that Yule can occur at any time of the day or night, and our ancestors weren’t as precise (though they were precise to the day) in their astronomical calculations, I don’t think it matters. I think that’s just a matter of personal preference. Having said that. Most of the Heathens I know will celebrate Mothers’ Night the evening before Yule.
Whenever Yule is. 😉
The Length of Yule
Don’t give up now – I promise this bit is shorter!
Meanwhile, back in England, Alfred the Great ordained in 888, that :
43. To all freemen let these days be given… twelve days at Yule
Now, that’s a bit different to what was going on elsewhere:
Yule had previously been celebrated for three nights from midwinter night, according to the [Saga of Hákon the Good]. [9]
We know that the ritual of twelve days persisted in England. But where did it come from?
By the time Alfred the Great proclaimed his laws, England had been Christian for nearly 250 years. The process had begun at the very beginning of the 7th century, as a determined mission to convert the English. Now, that itself began at least 250 years after the earliest evidence we have for Christmas being celebrated by the Western Christian church on 25th December. The Eastern church celebrated the birth of Jesus as the Epiphany on 6th January. Eventually the church got its act together and combined these two days to become one festival:
Christmastide, commonly called the Twelve Days of Christmas, lasts 12 days, from 25 December to 5 January, the latter date being named as Twelfth Night … this was done in order to solve the “administrative problem for the Roman Empire as it tried to coordinate the solar Julian calendar with the lunar calendars of its provinces in the east.”
This occurred in 567, three hundred years before Alfred’s Laws made it compulsory for lords to give their freemen the time off, and before the conversion of England really kicked off. So perhaps, before then, the pagans in England followed their continental brothers in faith and celebrated for three days.
So, where does that leave us?
Well, my first conclusion is this: if you begin your Yule at sunset on Solstice eve in 2015, and you run it for 12 days, then you’ll end at sunset on 1st January.
My second conclusion is: it looks like we might have ‘paganised’ a Christian festival and claimed it for our own. At least the twelve days bit.
And the third is: the whole point about a Midwinter festival is to celebrate the turning point from more dark to less dark. So enjoy yourself!
And here’s a fun poem for your Yule night (whenever you hold it!):
This is the night of darkness;
This is the night of cold.
This is the night of short light
When gods themselves grow old.
This is the night the ice worm
Below the soil lays hold.
This is the night his grasp so tight
Grips earth, and hearth, and soul.
But on this night the fire bright
Is set alight again.
And knowing his chill rule is doomed
The worm curses all men.
He never sees the starlight,
He never sees the sun;
But still he knows what we ignite
Spells all his will undone.
He loathes the light of hearthfire,
He loathes the flame of doom.
His fear is all we hold so dear
For spring will him entomb.
And so he grips yet tighter
In hope the earth will freeze
And so it will, for two months still
But then his hold will ease.
And on this eve we toast the worm
Whose death brings frith and joy;
And light the fire to be his pyre
And winter to destroy.
© Alexa Duir
Leaves from a Book of Shadows 