Yule by Lisa Thiel —Murfin Winter Holidays Music Festival

                                            Yule  by Lisa Thiel.

In the United States the exact moment of the Winter Solstice as defined by scientists—when the Sun is shining farthest to the south directly over the Tropic of Capricorn—occurs at 9:59 am Central Standard Time today.  You can figure out its arrival in your neck of the woods. The fact is that last night was the longest night of the year and today the sky will begin to grow light earlier each day.

In most pagan traditions around the Northern Hemisphere there were two ways to celebrate the Solstice.  Some lit fires in the darkest night to summon the return of the Sun.  Others gathered at dawn to in some way capture the first light of that return.  The latter often involved human construction on or in which that light would strike a significant stone or altar.  Think the pyramids in Egypt and the pre-Columbian Americas, Stonehenge, Greek temples, Native American medicine wheels, certain Medieval Cathedrals, and far simpler wooden structures in Northern Europe and Siberia. Either way, those who observe or recreate such rituals have found a way to do so.

The Winter Solstice is the pivot--equal light and dark on the way to the gradual return of the light/Sun.

Even if you do not observe the pagan doings—or shun them as the devil’s work—chances are that you to have been or will be celebrating the Solstice yourself. 

Modern neo-pagans celebrate the striking of a key stone at Stonehenge on Solstice morning with what they imagine a Druid ceremony might be like.

Buried in traditional folklore, swathed in symbolism, and steeped in metaphor, Christmas and Chanukah share the same impulses as Nordic Yule and its Celtic and ancient British cousins, Meán Geimhridh and Meán Geimhridhh beloved by contemporary neo-pagans of one stripe or another.  At their core there was in each of them a physical or metaphorical re-kindling of the light at the darkest hour of the year offering a glimmering of hope at a time of cold and starvation. 

One pagan story of the Winter Solstice is the assentation of the the Holly King in the Germanic and Norse celebration of Yule.

Other celebrations were connected to the Solstice or mid-winter including the Feast of Santa Lucia as it is celebrated in Scandinavia, St. Stephen’s or Wren Day, New Years, and even Kwanza.

While the trappings of Christmas—the Yule log, the holly and the ivy, the Christmas tree, mistletoe, wassailing, and other customs are commonly known to be borrowed from pagan celebrations, the metaphor of the birth of the Son, bringing light and salvation to the world is often overlooked.  Among still nervous orthodox Christians, drawing parallels to pagan belief is still discouraged.

The early Church actively squelched efforts to confabulate the Feast of the Nativity with the Festival of Sol Invictus, introduced to the Roman Empire in the Third Century under the Emperor Elagabalus. It was a religious revolution that briefly upended Jupiter as the primary Roman God and put in his place the Invincible Sun, which combined the characteristics and cult practices of several sun gods including Syrian Elah-Gabal, the Greek Apollo, and Mithras, a soldier god of Persian origin. 

The  Roman celebration of  Sol Invictus on December 25 was adapted by the early Church as a mass for the Son of God--Christmas--on the same date.

The feast was set on December 25, during the Roman holiday period following Saturnalia.  Later, under the Emperor Aurelian as Christianity grew in influence and importance, attempts were made to incorporate worship of the Christ child into the cult as an incarnation of Sol.  When the Church became ascendant in the Empire, it did all it could to suppress the festival, but like many popular pagan customs, it was so integrated into many daily lives that it inevitably influenced how Christmas, by then assigned to the same calendar day, was observed. 

Lisa Thiel is an artist and ceremonial singer whose healing song prayers and chants are among the most popular in the women’s spiritual movement today. Originally a holistic healing professional in Los Angeles, California, her spiritual path led her to study many of the world’s spiritual traditions and her teachers were yogis, shamans, Tibetan lamas, and wise women of the Goddess tradition.

The connecting thread throughout was the practice of sacred song for healing and empowerment, and an emphasis on the Sacred Feminine found in all traditions in one form or another. Lisa's songs are shamanic healing—medicine. Her songs have become a feature of women’s spiritual music and sung in circles around the world. 

Contemporary feminist singer/songwriter and shamistic healer Lisa Thiel is a mainstay of women's music and Goddess worship.

Yule comes from her 2005 album Circle of the Seasons.

Hogmanay—A Very, Very Big Deal in Scotland

Torch bearing Scottish warriors in an Edinburgh Hogmanay street parade. 

Scottish nationalists had a bad year.  They lost their long sought-after vote on national independence by an unexpectedly large margin.  The nationalists, always promoters of the unique Scottish culture, will perhaps take extra solace this year in the celebration of Hogmanay—the last day of the old year and the coming of the new.  This national festival and holiday is far more than just a big New Years Eve Party—it is the principle winter celebration, unabashedly pagan in its dim origins and current practice, eclipsing Christmas or New Years Eve after the pale and sickly manner of the English.  It is a very, very big deal indeed.

The celebration is both ancient and complicated, incorporating elements of the Winter Solstice traditions of the Norse Yule, the Celtic Samhain, and the Twelve Days of Christmas, recast as the Daft Days, minus any religious celebration of Nativity.  You can thank those dour old Calvinists of the National Kirk of Scotland—the Presbyterians for more completely scouring Christmas from the calendar than Oliver Cromwell and his Puritans ever dreamed in England.  If Scottish Catholics kept Christmas in their hearts, the kept their mouths shut about it and the practice faded even in their communities.  Christmas did not become a legal holiday in Scotland until 1958 and only then because so many English were moving into the border areas and were employed at firms in the big cities.

But Hogmanay was always a holiday.  In fact the whole damn country shut down to celebrate.  Both January 1 and 2 are Bank Holidays.  And if the second day, New Years Day, falls on a Sunday January 3 is a Bank Holiday.

If truth be known, the Kirk was not thrilled with Hogmanay either.  They predictably denounced it as pagan, which it surely was.  But either they despised paganism less than Papism, or they simply despaired of wiping out the most treasured celebration of the culture, but they could not wipe it out.  After perhaps dampening somewhat the excess of the season for a while, it came roaring back while the preachers in their wigs, bands, and Geneva Gowns whistled in the dark.

The origins of the word Hogmanay is as obscure as the origins of many of the customs associated with it.  Arguing the entomology of the word, which has had more than 30 variations in spelling depending on region and dialect and has only been standardized in the late 20th Century, is practically a national sport on its own.  Partisans of various theories are passionate.

Among the chief theories of origin advanced are.

·         Greek—the scholars of the Kirk surely got it wrong when they argued in the 1693 Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence that it was derived from a corruption the ancient Greek for Holy Month.  This was simply putting lipstick on a pig to dress it up for company.

·         French—This theory holds it was introduced by the French via the Auld Alliance—the traditional alliance between France and Scotland against England.  It is suggested it came from rural northern dialects of Middle French, aguillanneuf meaning either a gift given at New Year, a children’s cry for such a gift.  This is associated with traditions of ritual begging associated with the holiday in some areas.  It is also suggested that it might derive from the use of mistletoe as an emblematic gift of the beggars as in au gui mener or lead to the mistletoe.

·         Gaelic or Celtic—Although the term for New Years in Scots Gaelic is usually either  Oidhche na Bliadhna Ùire, the Night of the New Year or Oidhche Challainn the Night of the Calends, there are clues from folk usages in various areas.  In Manx, for instance there have been reported a remnant of an early folk song that begins with the line “Tonight is New Year’s Night, Hogunnaa.”  But other sources believe this refers to Halloween, once celebrated as New Years.  Others suggest an old Scottish begging plea thog mi an èigh/eugh corrupted over time.

·         Norse—This theory suggests that both the French and the Manx usages derived from a common Norse source, suggested in an old chant, “Hoginanaye-Trollalay/Hogman aye, Troll a lay/Hogmanay, Trollolay, give us of your white bread and none of your gray.”  The troll would refer to the people under the hill—the elves or the hoghmen, and that the begging chant originated in an ancient Troll banning invocation.

The truth is that the word origin is anybody’s guess.  We may just as well accept that it came down from heaven as a special gift to the Scotts.

The customs of Hogmanay vary considerable from location to location in Scotland but certain things are common—fire or pyrotechnics to welcome the New Year, communal conviviality, hospitality and visiting, and the invocation of one very special song.

The lighting of fires to greet the Solstice was common to both Norse and Celtic traditions.  In some rural areas the old hearth fire is extinguished, ashes removed and a new fire kindled.  In this tradition, visitors often bring as a gift a lump of coal to contribute to New Year flames.  In Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire in the northeast slinging torches are created by stuffing newspaper wadding, rags, and sticks into chicken wire balls which are lit and swung around the heads of revelers marching through the town arriving dockside at midnight and throwing the torch balls into the water.  Bon fires are common.  In Edinburgh, a reproduction of a Viking long ship is burned as a symbolic warning to those old invaders.

 Nowadays spectacular fireworks displays accompany The Bells, the striking of the midnight hour in major cities like Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Stirling, and Inverness.  Unlike the fireworks seen in American cities which often are a cue for revelers to head home, festivities in all of these cities continue through the night and into the next morning.

Revlers from the 1950's link arms for the singing of Auld Lang Syne at midnight.

In addition to wide spread communal and street celebrations, pubs, restaurants, hotels, and many families host large gatherings.  These parties involve festive traditional foods—shortbread, a black bun, special cakes for children, herring in coastal and fishing villages, and steak pie for a feast on New Years Day—story telling, dance, the exchange of small gifts after midnight, and plenty of free flowing whiskey.

At these parties it is common to clear the room so that at midnight all of the revelers form a circle to sing Auld Lang Syne.  Arms are linked at the beginning of the final verse which goes:

And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere!

and gie’s a hand o’ thine!

And we’ll tak’ a right gude-willie waught,

for auld lang syne.

At the conclusion of the song all of the guests rush to the center of the room, their clasped hands held high.  And then the revelry continues.

Auld Lang Syne, of course, was written by the beloved Scottish National Poet Robert Burns in the late 18th Century based on fragments of much older folk songs and set to a familiar air. Although not originally intended as a Hogmanay or New Years song—it was intended for any occasion of parting—the Scotts were singing it for these celebrations by the mid-19th Century.  Scottish regiments of the British Army introduced the song around the world.  By the early 20th Century it had found its way into very different New Years Eve celebrations in the U.S. really taking off when Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians began their long run of New Years Eve broadcast from a New York Hotel in 1928.

A First Footer with gifts, including symbolic coal for the hearth.

An important part of the home celebration which continues into January 1 is First Footing.  The first person to step foot across the threshold in the New Year is said to bring good luck.  It is important that the First Footer be a dark haired man.  A blonde or ginger is considered bad luck supposedly because the raiding and pillaging Vikings has light colored hair.  The First Footer is expected to bring gift of spirits, a black roll or other treat, and coal for the fire.  He and his party are elaborately welcomed with a fine breakfast and a dram or two of whiskey.

Visiting between homes continues throughout the day and into the following Bank Holiday and even beyond.  Presents are exchanged.  In some areas the old ritual begging by children continues.

By the time Hogmanay winds down, the whole nation is sated.  Those Scotts know how to party.  Pass the whiskey….