Yuletide December 20

The celebrations and traditions of Christmas at the winter solstice predate Christianity by thousands of years. There are many references to Yuletide in the Icelandic sagas and other ancient stories that provide evidence of how Yuletide was actually celebrated. It was a time of feasting, gift-giving, carousing, and dancing.

The festival of Yule is the holiest and most popular of all native Germanic spiritual celebrations, as Yule marks the return of the god Baldur from the realm of Hel and the loosening of winter's grip on the frozen Earth.

The start of the Yuletide celebration has no fixed date, but traditionally lasts 12 days with the start of the festivities beginning at sunset on the winter solstice (in the northern hemisphere, this date usually falls on or around the 20th). December) This Germanic pagan holiday was forcibly stolen by early Christian missionaries and became known as the "12 Days of Christmas."

The first night of Yule is called The Mothernight, where Frigga and the Disir (female ancestral spirits) are especially honored on this night. Mothers Night is aptly named, as it represents the rebirth of the world after the darkness of winter. It is the date with the shortest day and the longest night of the year.

A traditional dusk-to-dawn vigil is held on Mother's Night, to ensure that the sun rises again and welcomes her when it does.

Yule is the season when the gods and goddesses are closest to Midgard: our deities were called "Yule-Beings" by the Norse, and Odin himself is called Jólnir, the "Yule One" and this is where the image of Santa Claus is derived from. Yule is also the season when the dead return to earth and share the feasts of the living.

Elves, trolls, and other magical beings roam freely at this time and must either be repulsed or invited to come in friendship and peace. Yule is the time of year when the Wild Hunt—Wodan's host of the restless dead—rides most fiercely; it is dangerous to encounter them, but gifts of food and drink are left out for them, as they can also bring blessing and fertility.

Yule is a time of dancing, feasting, and family. Sun wheels are sometimes burned as part of folk festivities at this time. It was the practice in pagan Germanic times to swear an oath on a sanctified boar (the totem animal of Freyr and Freya).

This survived in Swedish folk custom; a large boar-shaped loaf or wooden block covered with pigskin was produced at Yule for this purpose until the beginning of this century, and boar cakes are used for Christmas oaths by most pagans today. Particularly meaningful oaths were also taken over the horn or cup while drinking at the Yule feast.

The "New Year's resolution" is a diminished form of the holy Christmas oath. The fir or pine tree that is brought into the house and decorated is an ancient Germanic custom, brought to America by German immigrants. The tree on which the sacred gifts are hung was of pagan origin and represented Yggdrasil, the mighty cosmic tree of life. 

In Germany, those who kept the old custom hid it inside for fear that the church authorities would notice it, but in England and Scandinavia, trees and various spirits received their gifts outside.

In these latter countries, it was a candlelit and ribbon-adorned crown, the ring of which perhaps reflected the sacred oath ring or the Christmas sun wheel, which was traditionally brought to decorate the house. The Yule log is also an old pagan custom.

This log was meant to burn all night long on the longest night of the year to symbolize life lasting even in the darkest hours, its fire reviving the sun in the morning. Its ashes or pieces were used as protective amulets for the rest of the year. Those without large fireplaces often use 24-hour candles instead.

The 12 days of Yule are largely spent baking cakes, cookies and breads and making unique decorations that beautify every home this festive season. There are, for example, intricate paper cutouts to make and put on the walls; swags, stars, wooden toys and straw animals in the shape of goats and boars to hang on the Christmas tree.

Straw animals, which are still widespread throughout Sweden, are closely related to the old mythology northern Germanic; from the legends sacred animals of the gods; the goats of Thor, the god of thunder, and the boar of Freyr, the god of fertility.

Most of the symbols associated with modern Christmas (such as the Yule log, Santa Claus and his elves, Christmas trees, the wreath, the eating of ham, holly, mistletoe, the star, etc.) come from the pagan Christmas celebrations of Northern Europe.

When early Christian missionaries began forcibly converting Germanic peoples to Christianity, they found it easier to simply provide a Christian reinterpretation of popular festivals such as Yule and allow the celebrations themselves to continue largely unchanged, rather than trying to suppress them. Halloween and Easter were also assimilated into the pagan religious festivals of northern Europe.