The sun descends into the underworld...

December 21, 2022 5:00 AM

Yule is not “Christmas with the serial numbers filed off”, and Christmas isn’t “Yule with added Baby Jesus”, Yule is far more exciting and wild and numinous than that. Folklore writer and pagan Yvonne Aburrow talks about the anarchic traditions of Yule - and about its function as a time of inner reflection.
posted by rongorongo (16 comments total)

Useful thoughts for redoing your SantaCon suit and songs.
posted by jeffburdges at 5:21 AM on December 21, 2022 [1 favorite]

> Yule is a time of liminality

I'd always thought of the time between Christmas and New Year as the backrooms of the calendar, so this makes sense to me.
posted by rpophessagr at 7:13 AM on December 21, 2022 [12 favorites]

This'll be the third year in a row without the solstice party a friend throws, which runs from mid-afternoon until the next dawn. Covid, you know? It sucks to not be able to defeat the dark and welcome the new year's light together.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:27 AM on December 21, 2022 [5 favorites]

Now I kind of want a shirt (or ugly sweater) that proclaims AXIAL TILT IS THE REASON FOR THIS SEASON!

Thanks for the good Yule reads.
posted by Ishbadiddle at 8:37 AM on December 21, 2022 [7 favorites]

Thanks for this! I do enjoy the (very brief) mention of mummers in Newfoundland and how genuinely weird and fun that tradition is. I'm not from the province, but my wife is and she introduced me to mummering and Tibb's Eve (possibly originally Tipsy Eve, Dec. 23 when folks would go out drinking and mummering before the more solemn, religious days of Dec. 24 and 25 in the heavily Irish Catholic province).
posted by asnider at 9:36 AM on December 21, 2022

This'll be the third year in a row without the solstice party a friend throws, which runs from mid-afternoon until the next dawn. Covid, you know? It sucks to not be able to defeat the dark and welcome the new year's light together.
Tonight, in Gaelic speaking Scotland its “Oidhche nan Seachd Suipearan” or “The night of the Seven Suppers”. It is so called, apparently because it seems long enough that one could fit seven suppers into it … so only a simple party planning step to make that a reality no?
posted by rongorongo at 9:46 AM on December 21, 2022

Bring back the stag running on the hill with the Sun caught between his antlers.
posted by Oyéah at 10:07 AM on December 21, 2022 [2 favorites]

It is nice to learn a bit more about the various collected traditions here, in a context other than my friend whose main winter solstice tradition is um-acktuallying about Christmas being a pagan holiday.
posted by shenkerism at 10:27 AM on December 21, 2022

I'd always thought of the time between Christmas and New Year as the backrooms of the calendar, so this makes sense to me.

My birthday falls in that period of time. My birthday has always seemed weird and off. Between school, between work. During a holiday season that's supposed to mean something else. An odd waiting time—almost a pause in time—between Xmas and New Year's Eve/Day. Liminal is a good word for it and how I feel about my birthday.
posted by SoberHighland at 11:01 AM on December 21, 2022 [7 favorites]

Bring back the stag running on the hill with the Sun caught between his antlers.

Feel like the top-line blog post here is actually rather thin on substantive details here. What does it mean to bring back a stag running up the hill with the sun caught in his antlers, in practical terms? (Beyond, I guess, swapping a statute of a stag in for a creche - something that would definitely go in the bucket of filing the serial numbers off one holiday for those of another?) The other posts linked by the author provide some context about pagan vs. Christian traditions, but what I’d really like is some kind of play-by-play of Aburrow’s yule festivities or how, specifically, they have de-Christmas-ed their festivities.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:10 AM on December 21, 2022

I'd always thought of the time between Christmas and New Year as the backrooms of the calendar, so this makes sense to me.

The period where nothing gets done and we're all just hanging in limbo. I call it the Abyss of Capricorn.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:13 AM on December 21, 2022 [4 favorites]

While I've been too lazy the last pile of years, Drumming Up the Sun has been my Solstice tradition of choice.
posted by evilDoug at 11:14 AM on December 21, 2022

As someone who is in the darkness, the return of light is both a mystical and a physical thing. Today, there were just seven hours of daylight. Tomorrow, there will be a second more. But in midsummer, we will have daylight almost all through the night.

It seems somehow important to me that the US-Ukraine meeting in Washington is today. A day of new light, of hope.

Drum up the sun indeed.
posted by mumimor at 2:10 PM on December 21, 2022 [4 favorites]

Wait, today was 6 hours and 32 minutes here. What a day.
posted by mumimor at 2:14 PM on December 21, 2022 [2 favorites]

but my wife is and she introduced me to mummering and Tibb's Eve (possibly originally Tipsy Eve, Dec. 23 when folks would go out drinking and mummering before the more solemn, religious days of Dec. 24 and 25 in the heavily Irish Catholic province).

my friend is a Cape Bretoner and he will not let a year go by without recognizing Tibb's (Tipsy) Eve.. he also never met a St. Patrick's Day he didn't leave unpunished, neither
posted by elkevelvet at 2:38 PM on December 21, 2022

"the 12 days of Yuletide are intercalary days, making up the difference between the lunar year and the solar year"

This fits with my own feeling of Yule as a time outside of time, when the normal structures of my days dissolve and disappear and are replaced with a quasi-hibernation, a very welcome, cozy spaciousness -- stringing glittering lights in the darkness, giving magical gifts, cuddling up with family and pets, singing in rough and happy harmony, lighting fires, and soaking up all the warmth we can manage.
posted by cnidaria at 8:26 PM on December 21, 2022 [4 favorites]