Yule 2022 By Cathy Crystal
A Celebration of Light and Love: Winter Solstice and Yule with Cathy Crystal
The Winter Solstice begins on 12/21/2022 initiating the celebrations of Yule with Pagan Scandinavian and Germanic People from Northern Europe. There are many ways to celebrate this time of year.
This years Winter Solstice: 1:48 PM PST December 21st, 2022. The Winter Solstice with its Waning Moon starts to retreat back toward the new moon phase. You will find the energy getting less intense by the day, allowing you to slow down and give more time to your inner thoughts. It is a time to observe several traditions or perform rituals.
On the Winter Solstice Journey Home will send out another more detailed meaning of the Winter Solstice written by Cathy Crystal.
Yule-Time: Creates a 12 day feast including decoration the Yule tree and wreaths.
Yule_Play: includes Bonfires and Candle Burning with song, lyric, or phrase.
Yule-Decorating: Holly and Mistletoe combined with a mother’s tears to resurrect
her son, the God of Light and Goodness sung in Viking myths. The Celts believe
Mistletoe possessed healing powers as well and would ward off evil sprits.
Yule-Trees: - Evergreen decorating with Wood Carvings of the Yule log - Whole trees
meant to be burned for 12 days in the hearth. The Celts believed the sun stood still during the winter solstice and keeping the log going for 12 days encouraged the sun to move making the days longer. The largest end of the log would be fed into the hearth and wine poured over it including last year’s log would be fed into the fire since letting the log burn out is believed to bring bad luck.
Yule-Ritual Sacrifices: Getting ride of the old to bring in the new. Discarding the unwanted to bring in new things to bring in good tidings.
Yule-Tide Food - A 12 day feast - the heart of the festivities. The mid-winter feast for 12 days of food for the tree spirits to encourage them to return in the spring.
Yule-Gift Giving - In norse tradition, Old Man Winter, the first father of Christmas with a long white beard, visited homes to join in the festivities. Viking children left their shoes out by the hearth on the eve of the winter solstice with sugar and hay for the Odin’s eight-legged horse, Sleipnir.
Yule-Caroling: Children travelled from house to house with gifts of apples and oranges spiked with cloves and resting in baskets lined with evergreen boughs.
Yule-Selfies: Modern day making of the Shadows: If you like taking pictures of shadows - take selfies of your shadows. During this time, the sun is at its lowest arc across the sky. This means shadows from the sun’s light are at their longest during the solstice. In fact, a noontime shadow on 12/21/2022 is the longest it will be all year! Share your selfies at Journey Home.