My ancestors were Scots. Celts. Vikings, too. And yeah, they were pagans. I’m not pagan (though I rode with ’em a time or two), but I won’t deny that those rough clans did some pretty cool shit.
Every year on the Winter Solstice, they’d kick off a 12-day festival they called jól (Old Norse), which became gēol (Old English), what we now know as Yule. One of their traditions was to gather ’round the burning of a ceremonial log.
Lighting the Yule Log on the year’s shortest day celebrated the return of the sun. It was thought to bring the clan prosperity and protection from harm and sickness.
The Yule Log, like many previously pagan customs and symbols, ultimately was massaged into Christianity. Today, we often refer to the Christmas season as “Yuletide.”
If knowing that bothers you, I’ll bet you think that trick-or-treat on Halloween is Satanic. Well, if you’ve ever blown out candles on your birthday cake or eaten pork, sauerkraut and beans on New Year’s Day, you’re practicing rituals with heathen origins.
“All nature sings, and round me rings the music of the spheres.”
from the surprisingly pantheistic Christian hymn, “This is My Father’s World”
As you’ll recall from my previous post, I built this in our fire ring yesterday:
This morning I took care of Scout and Smudge early. Then I left Deb to sleep, bundled up and walked out to the fire pit.
The temperature at 6am was 18°F. Winds were calm. A waning Gibbous moon was directly overhead in the starry, cloudless pre-dawn sky.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a homemade pine-and-paraffin firestarter, tucked it into the tinder bundle at the base of the fire lay and lit the edges. Within moments, flames were licking up through the layers of red cedar.
After five minutes, the blaze was quite literally roaring. The large chunk of cedar atop the lay began to catch right away.
It might be the most successful fire I’ve ever built.
This is how I marked the Winter Solstice — with a Yule Log, a humble tribute to the traditions of the ancients, my forebears. Here’s to them, to prosperity, to protection, and to the sun’s return.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB
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