Happy Yule

Today is the day of the winter’s solstice, and therefore the first of the Twelve Days of Yule (ON Jól).  This year the winter solstice (which equates with the summer solstice in the southern hemisphere) will occur on December 21, at 23:38 UTC or 11:38 pm Western European Time (WET). The time of the solstice is not regular because of the earth’s irregular orbit and it lasts but a moment and is over in a blink of an eye, but it is a significant moment and has been throughout all history, in many cultures and to many religions, including my own. It signals the shortest day of the year and the point at which the days begin once more to grow longer, a process which culminates at the summer solstice.

There was the other day a significant article about the winter solstice and why it is so important, There Goes the Sun, by Richard Cohen and I hope it will get plenty of reads. It will really help to put the day – and it’s importance – in perspective.

Many Heathens will be celebrating Mother’s Night and Yule (one of the “three greatest blessings of the year” mentioned in the Ynglinga saga), and some others also the Twelfth Night on January 1st. There will be feasting and toasting in the best traditions of our folk. I will, as family tradition dictates, raising and decorating the tree today. It will duly come down at the end of the twelve days. We will all have traditions, even if we will not all agree on them or their specific character, or even celebrate them all on the same days. That kind of precision never existed in the ancient Heathen world (the science of the time did not permit it) and it does not exist now, despite the science, because we no longer know enough about the specifics of the religion practiced by our ancestors.

None of that changes our embrace of the season, or the astronomical phenomenon that signals its beginning. I wish you Yule Greetings, health and the joy of family and friends, and the blessings of the gods, our ancestors, and the spirits of hearth and nature.