YULE

The winter solstice was celebrated on every continent of the earth.  The sun is the largest and brightest object in our skies and all of life on earth is dependant on its light and heat. During our own temperate summer we have long, warmer days when animals produce young and plants flourish and bear fruit, but during the winter the days are short and cold, vegetation dies and animals struggle to find food – survival is harder and sometimes impossible. For our ancestors, winter often brought starvation and death.

Ancient man would have realised that we depend on the sun for life. Each day, up to the winter solstice, the sun grows weaker and weaker. If it does not regenerate then life must end. Then, on the shortest day in the time of darkness, the light is reborn and with it hope.

The winter solstice takes place on or about December 21^st every year in the northern hemisphere (or 21^st June in the southern hemisphere). The sun hangs low and weak in the sky during the brief daylight hours, casting long shadows. It is the shortest day and longest night, but from this time the sun gradually strengthens; thus it is the death of the old solar year and the start of the new. Solstice’ is derived from two Latin words: sol meaning ‘sun’, and sistere, ‘to cause to stand still’ and so means ‘sun stands still’. The sun usually rises at a different point on the horizon each day (it only rises due east at the spring equinox). It travels north-east to its furthest position at the summer solstice and appears to stand still for a few days before heading south-east, reaching its southernmost position at the winter solstice where it seems to rest again for a few days before heading north once more. The summer solstice is celebrated when the sun reaches its most northerly position. Moreover, during the winter the sun does not rise so high in the sky and the shadows are longer. During the summer it climbs high and strong in the sky and shadows are short.

We experience changing seasons because the axis of the Earth - an imaginary line between the north and south poles - is tilted from true by 23.5 degrees. As our planet revolves around the sun, this means that part of the earth tilts towards the sun, then away again.  Between June and September the Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward the sun and gets more light, experiencing the season of summer. At the same time the Southern Hemisphere experiences winter.  Between December and March the Northern Hemisphere is tilted away from the sun and experiences less light and warmth, while the Southern Hemisphere enjoys summer. Just how much sunlight you experience depends on the latitude you occupy. By June 21^st there are twenty-four hours of daylight above the Arctic Circle, while below the Antarctic Circle there are twenty-four hours of darkness.  During spring and autumn, both hemispheres experience milder weather and the two equinoxes mark the junctures when the Earth’s axis is pointing sideways. Without the tilt in the Earth’s axis we would have the same degree of light and warmth - or dark and cold - all year round, and have no seasons at all; the sun’s rays would always be directly over the Equator. The solstices and equinoxes are the four stations of the sun during the year, represented by an equal armed cross; there is a frequent connection between sun gods and crosses.

The winter solstice is generally considered to be the start of winter, and the three winter months are reckoned as December, January and February. However, the ‘solar winter’- the period with the fewest hours of daylight and the weakest sunlight - stretches from November 1^st to February 1^st with the solstice marking Midwinter.  Though the Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year, it is not the date of either the earliest sunset or the latest sunrise. The earliest sunset occurs around Little Yule on 13^th December, and the latest sunrise around New Year at the beginning of January.

Throughout the year the sun passes through the constellations of the zodiac and the summer solstice occurs in the constellation of Cancer, the Crab, and the winter solstice in the constellation of Capricorn, the Goat.  At the moment of the winter solstice, the path of the sun in the sky over the past six months has reached its furthest southern position and now turns northward again.

The sun governs the pattern of life, its cycles dividing the hours, days, months and years, the round of sowing, growth, harvest and decay. The Egyptians called the sun the divine creator of all things, the master of time and the seasons. Its regular daily and seasonal rotations stand as a symbol of cosmic order. From where we stand on earth, each day the sun seems to rise in the east, scattering the powers of darkness and diffusing light and fertility as it climbs to its zenith at noon. Then it declines, descending into the west and eventually sinking below the horizon, only to return with the following dawn. The Egyptian sun god Ra was born as a baby each dawn, grew to maturity at noon and became an old man at sunset, ready for death. Each sunrise demonstrated the victory of life over the forces of death and darkness; it was a metaphor for human spiritual and physical life, reflecting our own experiences of birth, growth, decay and death, as well as our hope of rebirth, our struggles against negativity and the triumph of spirit. Thus, for our ancestors the eternal cycle of the sun was the central paradigm of their spiritual beliefs. Sun gods were:

“…the types and models of the divine potentiality…they were the mirror held up to men, in which could be seen the possibilities locked up in man’s own nature. They were type figures, delineating the divine life that was an ever possible realization for any devoted man. They were the symbols of an ever coming deity, a deity that came not once historically in Judea, but that came to ever fuller expression and liberation in the inner heart of every son of man. The solar deities were the gods that ever came, that were described as coming not once upon a time, but continuously and regularly. Their radiant divinity might be consummated by an earnest person at any time or achieved piecemeal.”  [1]

There are thousands of sun gods and goddesses with remarkably similar characteristics: they battle the forces of darkness and dispel evil; they illuminate the sky; see everything on their path and uncover those secrets hidden by darkness (often in the form of prophecy); they represent truth, justice and enlightenment and they bring healing. The Babylonian Shamash was known as ‘the sun with healing in his wings’ while Celtic Belinos would melt away disease from the sick, just as he melted away the mist each morning.

Solar myths explain the sun’s daily movement across the sky from east to west and its disappearance at night as a journey taken by the god, usually travelling across the heavens in a chariot or boat. In Scandinavian and Celtic countries many Bronze Age carvings show the sun disc being pulled along on a cart. The Greek Helios (or Apollo) drove his fiery chariot through the sky by day, and by night he floated back across the ocean in a golden bowl, only to mount the chariot again the next morning. Ra travelled across the sky in his sun-boat and passed through the Duat (underworld) each night, bringing light to the souls imprisoned there and defeating the demon Apep before escaping with the dawn.

Dawn and dusk were often spoken of as gates. In Norse myth the sun emerged each day from deling’s dore (‘dawn’s door’), and for the Canadian Bella Cool Indians the doors are guarded by a warrior called the Bear of Heaven. Shamash entered the Gate of the East onto the Mountains of Sunrise and travelled to the Mountains of Sunset and exited through the Western Gate of Heaven. [2]

Where the sun went at night, and whether it would return, was a matter for grave concern. What would happen if the sun god failed to defeat the monsters of darkness and not rise each dawn? Life on earth would come to an end.

The sun god could be benign and friendly, spreading his light and warmth, or he could be cold and indifferent, withdrawing his gifts; he could even be cruel and destructive, shrivelling living things with his overbearing heat. It was necessarily to propitiate him, and in some places human sacrifices were offered in order to bring back the sun at the winter solstice. The Aztecs murdered hundred of people on the steps of the pyramid at Tenochtitlan and offered their still-beating hearts to the sun. In contrast, the Apalachee Indians of Florida believed that since the sun was the source of all life, the destruction of any creature offended him. Instead they contented themselves with saluting the sun at dawn and dusk, and released birds through the roof of their cave temple to take their prayers to the god. [3]

SUMMER AND WINTER

As well as the sun’s daily birth and nightly death, the sun is seen to wax and wane during the year. After midwinter the sun begins to grow stronger and the days lengthen up until midsummer, when the opposite happens and the days gradually grow shorter and colder. At midwinter and midsummer the sun apparently changes its course.

In midwinter having reached the lowest point in its path, it turns about and begins to mount the skies; conversely at midsummer, having attained the highest point it reaches, the sun seems to turn about once more and descend. Consequently it was often imagined the sun god was born at the winter solstice and grew until midsummer, afterwards declining towards his death at the midwinter solstice, before being reborn and the whole cycle beginning again. Hurs or Hors was the Slavonic god of the old winter sun who became smaller as the days grew shorter and died on korochun (the winter solstice) defeated by the dark powers of Chernobog. The next day Hors was resurrected as the new sun, Koleda. (Koleda survives in the modern Slavonic languages as the word for Christmas.) Because of his transformation the Slavs worshipped Hors as the god of healing and the triumph of health, [4] a characteristic shared by most of the sun gods around the world. The rebirth of the sun at the winter solstice meant that the hope for the renewal of the cycle of the seasons was accomplished, and the wheel of life would spin on. In many countries this festival season was known as yole or yuul, meaning ‘wheel’ from the word hiaul or huul, which even to this day signified the sun in some languages. The wheel is one of the ancient symbols of the sun, the spokes representing its rays and the wheel’s turning the sun’s passage through the year.

THE POLARITY OF THE TWO SOLSTICES

The constellation of Cancer became known to the Chaldean and Platonist philosophers as the ‘Gate of Men’ though which they said the souls of people came down from heaven and were incarnated at the summer solstice, as opposed to Capricorn which was the Gate of the Gods where departed souls returned to the heavens at the winter solstice, and though which the sun god was reborn:

“In Babylonian tradition there were actually two entrances to the underworld, each of which is associated with one of the solstices. The winter time entrance is used by discarnate souls journeying to the afterlife, but the summer entrance, located in the region of the crab, is used by the spirits of the ancestors when they return to earth to visit their family homes for the great ancestral festival celebrated in month five. It is also the route that the souls of newborn babies use to enter in the world of men.” [6]

Since the sun ascends and travels north after leaving the sign of Capricorn, the Romans called that month Januanus, or January, from janua meaning ‘a gate’ leading to the New Year. In contrast, the Egyptian New Year was in Cancer, the summer solstice, the time of renewal with the Nile floods.[7]

This ancient polarity between life and death at the two solstices is suggested by discoveries in the ritual landscape around Stonehenge made during a six year excavation lead by Mike Parker Pearson, which ended in 2009. The archaeologists concluded that while Stonehenge was a stone-built site where the summer solstice was celebrated, Durrington Walls, two miles northeast of the stone circle, was a henge (about 1400 feet in diameter, enclosing a series of concentric rings of huge timber posts) where people celebrated the winter solstice. While Stonehenge is aligned with sunrise at the summer solstice, the henge at Durrington Walls is aligned with sunrise at the winter solstice and sunset at the summer solstice. While Stonehenge was a monument to the ancestors with cremation burials, the complex at Durrington was very much a place for the living, where people lived and held ceremonies and feasts (which included pork) before sending the dead on the voyage to the afterlife, though excarnation, pouring their ashes into the River Avon or burying the ashes of a select few at Stonehenge. (In this it echoes Egypt, where permanent stone constructions were for the gods and the dead on the West Bank of the Nile, and impermanent mud and timber buildings on the East Bank were for the living.) Pearson had worked in Madagascar where the dead were buried in stone and their spirits thought to inhabit the stone. Stone is used to commemorate the dead in many cultures, and some think that the cave paintings of the Stone Age were an attempt to return the spirits of the hunted animals to the rock.

Some cultures, such as the Celts, believed that there were two suns – the summer sun and the winter sun. The summer sun was born at the winter solstice and increased in strength until the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. The dark winter sun began his reign at the summer solstice and increased his powers of darkness until the point of the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. From this we get the idea of a battle between light and darkness in an endless cycle. Modern Pagans often re-enact this as the battle of the Oak and Holly Kings at the solstices, with the Oak King (the summer sun) slaying the Holly King (the winter sun) at the winter solstice, and vice versa at the summer solstice, a motif suggested by Robert Graves in The White Goddess, based on the Arthurian legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. [8] The idea of twin sun gods, or the sun god having twin sons as his heirs, is common. Other examples are Gwyn and Gwythyr, Baldur and Hoder, Lugh and Balor, Balan and Balin, Romulus and Remus, Prometheus and Epimetheus, Merodach and Haman, Krishna and Balarama, Esau and Jacob, and Jesus and John the Baptist.

These two lords – often twins or even hero and dragon/snake – fight for rulership of the land, summer and winter.[9] The Greek sun god Apollo killed the Python at Delphi with his sun-ray arrows. The Egyptian god Ra, as the solar cat, fought the serpent of darkness, Set.

The dark twin or dragon is not an evil power but merely the other side of the coin: one is light, the other dark; one summer, one winter; one sky and the other underworld. Pagans accept these polarities as a necessary part of the whole. Winter comes but summer will return. The sun sets, travels though the underworld at night, and emerges with the dawn. The king dies, returns to the underworld womb of the Earth Goddess and is reborn. In Christian times the themes of these myths were changed and the hero killed the dragon instead of defeating him for the summer months. According to the Pagan world view, the slain god will rise again every year, and the light and dark rule in balance. Later myths see death as a final ending and the light and dark as in opposition. The gods of the light half of the year became dragon slaying saints such as St. George and St Michael, and the dragons they slew a metaphor for defeated Pagans. The dark became evil and the fruitful underworld womb of the Goddess became the Christian hell.

In ancient China the two solstices were celebrated as polar opposites, with chi energy flowing in different directions right after the summer and winter solstices. Yin was born (began) at the summer solstice and yang was born (began) at the winter solstice. Yin is the moon, dark, passive, downward, cold, contracting and weak, while yang is the sun, bright, active, upward, hot, expanding and strong. In rituals that took place at the Forbidden City, the summer solstice was celebrated on the square altar of the earth, while the winter solstice ritual utilised the round mound. Both featured a sacrifice, but while the summer victim was buried the winter one was burned. Herbs and plants such mugwort were burned to ward off evil during the height of the summer heat.

MEASURING THE SUN

From the earliest times priests and astronomers tried to measure and calculate the times of the solstices and equinoxes and used a variety of techniques to display future solstices. A marker could be located at the end of a long passage which would be illuminated by the rising or setting of the solstice sun. Alternatively, a hole in the roof of a structure might allow the noonday sun to shine onto a marker set into the floor.

In temperate zones, the shadow of an upright pillar could be observed on the summer solstice: the shadow would be shortest on the day. At noon a rod or gnomon would cast no shadow at all.

The ancients built temples and monuments to honour these celestial events, asserting that the builders and worshippers were part of the cosmic order and not merely bystanders swept along by events but one with them.[10]

Many were designed to mark the moment when the sun rose or set on the shortest or longest day. At Callanish on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, four rows of stones lead into a circle from four directions, while the circle itself is aligned to the solstice sunrises and sunsets, as well as the equinoxes. It is so far north that the sky never actually darkens on a midsummer night.  At Mnajdra in Malta, the sun’s rays penetrate the temple’s entrance and follow the main corridor to light up the altar. At the Temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak a beam of light would illuminate a sanctuary in the interior for two to three minutes before peaking and subsiding.  The Sun Dagger Celestial Calendar in New Mexico offers a direct alignment with both the winter solstice sunset and summer solstice sunrise. Newgrange in Ireland was designed to funnel a shaft of sunlight deep into a central chamber at the winter solstice. Above the entrance is a stone box that allows the light from the sun to penetrate to the back of the cairn at sunrise.

The celebration of the winter solstice dates back at least 10,000 years and possibly very much earlier. Many archaic structures, such as stone circles and the burial chambers, have winter solstice alignments.  Stonehenge is not only orientated to the summer sunrise as many think, but also to the winter solstice sunrise and sunset along the main axis of the temple. The temples of Karnak and Abydos (in Egypt) have winter solstice alignments and the Sun Dagger celestial calendar in New offers a direct alignment with both the winter solstice sunset and summer solstice sunrise. Newgrange in Ireland was designed to funnel a shaft of sunlight deep into its central chamber at dawn on the day of the Winter Solstice. Above the entrance way is a stone box that allows the light from the sun to penetrate to the back of the cairn at sunrise. Its older name was An Liamh Greine or ‘the Cave of the Sun’.

It was a common belief that the sun spent each night or each winter in a cave. Many solar deities are said to have been born from a cave: Mithras dragged the solar bull from a cave; Zeus was born in the Dictean Caves on Crete; the god Krishna was born in a dark dungeon; Apollo was born under Delos, where no rays of sunlight could penetrate; the Phoenician god Melkarth woke from his winter sleep in his sacred cave at the winter solstice and the Japanese sun goddess Amaterasu lived in a cave for a time.  In early Christian stories, Jesus was born in a cave - the Greek text of the Gospel of St Luke uses the word katalemna, meaning cave, not stable - and in Bethlehem the Church of the Nativity is built over a cave.

THE VIRGIN MOTHER

The sun god is always said to be the son of a virgin- he is born at the winter solstice at midnight when the sign of Virgo the Virgin is rising above the horizon. In ancient Egypt the incarnated god and saviour Osiris died and was entombed at the winter solstice, then at midnight, the priests emerged from an inner shrine crying “The Virgin has brought forth! The light is waxing" and showing the image of a baby to the worshipers, the infant Horus, Osiris reincarnated. The festival lasted twelve days (the origin of the twelve days of Christmas) to reflect the twelve months of the year.

It was a common belief that the twelve days of Yule were connected to the twelve months ahead. In Britain, the weather on each day reflected that which could be expected in the corresponding month. In Germany and Scandinavia, the twelve months of the year are magically reflected during the twelve holy nights when the Wild Hunt rides out. It is an especially dangerous time when spirits are abroad.

THE GREAT BEAR

The legendary King Arthur (‘Bear-Man’) was identified with the constellation of the Great Bear which was called Arthur’s Wain (wagon), or sometimes Arthur’s Plough. The bear hibernates in the winter, entering a cave or some quiet, secluded place. It emerges in the spring with the female often having given birth in the meantime and appearing with cubs in tow. This led to the bear being associated with regeneration and rebirth, adopted as a solar symbol. It seems likely that Arthur was originally a sun/bear god, with the solstice being called Alban Arthur or 'Arthur's Time' by modern Druids. Arthur’s marriage to the Earth causes it to blossom. During the year he is a warrior who battles the darkness. In the winter he is the aging sun king who dies, sleeping in a cave until his promised return.[i] Following the Great Bear is the constellation of Boötes, the herdsman, with its brightest star Arcturus or 'Bear Keeper'.  When it first rises over the eastern horizon, not long after the winter solstice each year, it means that spring is on its way. Arcturus is known as 'The One who Comes', and just as Arthur is known as the 'Once and Future King.' The constellation of the Great Bear circles around the still Pole Star during the course of the year. To this day the Welsh refer to the northern heavens as the Bwrdd Arthur (Arthur's Table), described as round. [ii]

THE SATURNALIA

For the Romans, Dies Natalis Invicti Solis, ‘the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun’ celebrated the birth of Sol (the sun). Roman women would parade in the streets crying ‘unto us a child is born!’ In the old Julian calendar the winter solstice, or Bruma ‘the shortest day,’ fell on December 25^th..

The Romans also held the Saturnalia festival at the winter solstice, and it is the origin of many Yuletide customs we still enjoy today. Saturn (from satus meaning ‘sowing’), cognate with the Greek Kronos, is one of the elder Roman deities, a god of time and agriculture. The feast commemorated the mythical age of Saturn's kingship, a Golden Age of happiness for all men. Like Arthur, it is said that he lies asleep on a secret island and one day will return. In the meantime, once a year a temporary Golden Age was celebrated. Riotous merry-making took place, and lights were kept burning to ward off the spirits of darkness. Schools were closed, the army rested, and no criminals were executed. Friends visited one another with gifts of cakes, lamps, dolls, jewellery and incense. Temples were decorated with evergreens symbolizing life's continuity, and processions of people with masked or blackened faces danced through the streets. Masters served meals to their slaves who elected a Mock King to take charge of the revels. This custom continued with the Mediaeval Lord of Misrule who presided over the Christmas festivities.

There is an element of anarchy and the reversal of social order about the Yuletide festivities, because the dying of the sun threatens a descent into primal chaos: it the end of the old cycle of existence, and order is restored only with its rebirth. The intervening period or ‘gap in time,’ the inter-calendar days of the twelve days of Yule, is especially magical and otherworldly, being a time on the verge of chaos when the barriers between the realms dissolve, when the veils between the living and dead are thin. Finnish shamans call it ‘The Dreaming’ or ‘God’s Trance Hour’.[iii] Several fairies are said to destroy any spinning left on the wheel at Yule or Christmas. This has its origin in the fact that many sun gods and goddesses were associated with spinning, either spinning the Cosmos itself, or sunbeams in the hours before dawn. At Yule, the midwinter solstice, when the sun stands still, all forms of spinning and weaving were forbidden because it was a pause in the turning of the wheel of the year. The Lapps forbade the turning of any kind of wheel, including cartwheels and churns.

Stories surrounding the winter solstice often tell of a battle between light and dark, during which the light triumphs.  The battle of the summer and winter king at Augsburg, where summer wears ivy and evergreens and winter is masked, is marked by a fight between the two in which summer wins. In Steiermark winter and summer are teams of young men. The winter men wear fur jackets and have baker’s shovels, flails and reels of twine. The summer men have sickles, scythes and pitchforks.

All of the customs associated with the modern Christmas are Pagan in origin.  A December festival to celebrate the birth of Christ didn't exist until the fourth century when Christians simply adopted the popular solstice celebrations honouring the birth of the divine child, the sun.  The eastern churches refused to honour it for another hundred years, and the church of Jerusalem ignored the date until the 7th century. John Chrysostom, a fourth-century bishop of Constantinople firmly believed December 25^th was selected so Christians could celebrate Christ's birthday undisturbed while "the heathen were busy with their profane ceremonies".[iv]

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