How do pagans celebrate Yule?

Question

Do pagans refer to 'Christmas' at all, do they follow the present-giving tradition, and if so how do they explain the whole festival to their children?

I realise there are many different facets of paganism, from the Hellenics to the Northern traditions. But despite it's pre-Christian origin, the december festival is now so inextricably linked with Christianity globally & is so commercially huge, that I just wonder how it translates into the pagan calendar & lifestyle?

thanks

Answer 1

Most Pagans who have a Yule-type festival do a combination of the two. The gift-giving aspect is a part of the religious celebration.....

Answer 2

It's not Christmas at all to us-- it's Yule, the Winter Solstice. Different holiday that shares roots with Christmas. Our family, on the day before, set up the altar and get the Solstice feast ready. Other family or friends may come for the holiday as well. When the sun sets, we have prayer observances and light the new Sun Candle. We have our feast and make our offerings. Then we sing songs, tell stories, bake, etc. Some might go to bed... like children, who camp out under the Yule Tree, decorated with solstice and nature and Goddess symbols. They get out their sleeping bags and go to sleep. Other adults stay up to keep vigil as the Goddess gives birth through the night. We hold a ritual, meditate, etc. Before the sunrise everyone gets woken up, we have coffee or hot cocoa and some warm baked goods that got made the night before and we watch the sun come up. Then we all crash, sleep a few hours, get up, have a good lunch. We light the candle and say prayers for 12 nights. The gifts are a small part of it. We don't exchange anything major... my mom and her side of the family are Christian & celebrate Christmas, so we usually bring our gifts there to exchange with the family.

Answer 3

Christmas celebrations in America are largely derived from the folk customs of German and Dutch immigrants, so it's hardly surprising they'd look a whole lot like Yule.

Decorating with greenery is noted as early as Tacitus' "Germania," iirc (about 79 CE) although a decorated tree is largely suppositional at this point---xian tradition claims it dates to Luther seeing the stars through a pine tree's branches one xmas eve and trying to recreate it, but you can well imagine how likely THAT is, lol. Other traditions say that trees where hung with gifts for the vaettir, tomten, and Nissen during Yule, but that after the Conversion, were hidden indoors. It's plausible, but not documented in any scholarly source.

But Santa Claus, the Yule log, the wassail (punch) bowl, carollers, gifting, the ham (an echo of the Yule Boar sacrifice), even New Year's Resolutions, are all distant echoes of heathen traditions.

So, to answer your question, how do *I* celebrate Yule?

For twelve full days, like a heathen (Mothersnight to Twelfth Night) and while laughing my butt off at Christians whinging about "keeping the Christ in Christmas" and opining that "Jesus is the reason for the season" . . . lol. I mean, after all . . . Christ was never originally even IN "Christmas"---the RCC basically just threw in the towel on that one when people wouldn't give up Yule.

Answer 4

I refer to it as 'Christmas' to the general public & non-pagan family, just because it's easy. I don't get hung up on names. I know what I mean.

We do lots of great stuff! Decorate the tree, put up lights on the house, decorate a gingerbread house... Christmas Eve is typically the gift-giving occasion, often spent at a grandparent's house, and in the night my husband and I fill the stockings by the fireplace, including each other's. On Christmas day I make a nice but simple breakfast and a huge dinner for the whole extended family, with trifle for dessert.

The day after Thanksgiving my whole neighborhood goes bonkers with lights on the houses, so every evening for over a month we go for a walk with the kids so they can see the lights.

At the moment my children are too young to understand the deeper meanings, but here's what I plan to tell them: Yule is the celebration of light in the darkest time of the year. We feast and dance and laugh in the face of death and darkness. We give gifts to celebrate our togetherness and community. We have a festival of lights to celebrate the pending return of the Sun, the conquering of light over darkness. The evergreen, the only plant that could survive the harsh Northern winters, is a symbol of everlasting life.

These things are universal human concepts that don’t belong to any one religion. So several religions have a similiar celebration at the same time and it all amounts to the same thing.

Answer 5

Basically the same way Christians do. Many decorate the tree, use Yule logs, have mistletoe (though I am not too sure the Northern Traditions use mistletoe, but it is still a basic staple in the Pagan Yuletide traditions). In our house, we talk about the history of Yule, why it's celebrated - 1st day of winter, etc... But mainly it's about eating, at my house anyway lol

As for Christmas (which falls on a different date) we go to my parents house, since my mother is Christian and it's basically the same party all over again except my mother has the nativity scene on her coffee table (though ONLY thing in her entire house that would even let you know she is Christian). My father is Deist and much like the rest of us, enjoy getting together with family, eating a big meal and then napping while watching a movie.

It's fairly easy to exclude the Christian parts, since we know that everything but the Christian nativity scene (which we could go into the pagan origins of the scene itself) is Pagan in origin. Even many of the songs are of Pagan origin. Here we go a Wassailing. Deck the Halls.

Answer 6

Welp...let me put it this way.
We had Yule first. :D
The Roman has Satranillia. The Egyptians had...crap I can't remember now. ALL pagans had some sort of mid winter fesitival as the shortest day of the year. This had different meaning and variations, but the holiday always existed. Because of this, Christians' "borrowed" the holiday to make conversion easier. Jesus was born in Sept I believe. NOT December. December 25th is Mithras birthday I believe. That doesn't make Christmas any less holy for Christians. But it does lump them in with the rest of us and our mid winter holidays. But I repeat. Just about all pagans had a midwinter celebration to welcome the longer days. Longer days meant planting. Planting meant harvest. Harvest meant eating. The sun was the source of life, it still is. They welcomed it and all that came with it.

I am Heathen and for us it's the most important holiday of the year. Aaaaaand it's SO my favorite. We "celebrate" Christmas at my house in the sense that this is the day we do presents, mainly beause that is the day my husband has off of work and I want my kids to be aware of Christian holidays as they are surrounded by Christians. But no, we use the pagan tradtions.
Yule log, feast, ritual/blot, ham (Honeybaked if I can swing it), spiced wine and I'll add mead this year....we celebrate completly pagan. And it's fuuuuuuuuuuun. We get 12 days. Christians only get one.Ha!

Answer 7

Some celebrate Yule much like Christians do for Christmas, seeing friends, feasting and drinking but also with offerings to the deities of their choice. Again it depends which type of path you follow but these are the basic ingrediants.

Answer 8

Well I usually celebrate Christmas with my family, and Yule by myself because I'm the only one who's pagan... we've always celebrated Christmas, even though none of us are Christian. Besides, the traditions are practically identical (fir trees/branches, gift-giving, etc).

Answer 9

We do the same thing as Christmas, but on a different day - and instead of thank you baby Jesus - it's thank you God and Goddess, and we recognize the path the dieties take this time of year.

But generally, after ritual... we eat, exchange gifts. Many of the traditions of Christmas, such as the tree is pagan anyway and so it isn't very different.

Answer 10

All celebrations and merriment are all centered around the re-birth of the sun through the harsh, dark, cold winter. All pagan traditions in whatever country their in celebrate the suns birthday....And this is during the winter solstice which is Dec. 21st.