Thanksgiving to Yule...and why

Well, Thanksgiving is almost here! Of course, I feel like it has sorta already passed since we Pagans have already celebrated our THREE harvest festivals (Lughnasadh, Mabon & Samhain). But Thanksgiving gives me the chance to spend a PAID day off to spend with my brother & his family. And Saturday we'll go see my folks. That's the bad thing about being pagan...none of my holy days are paid days off. Sigh. Friday will be a day off, too, but unpaid. Bigger sigh.

Speaking of holy days, I have requested Dec 22nd off at work using our Outlook calendar system. So far, no one seems put out by me asking off the Friday before Christmas. You see, we pagans celebrate Yule on December 21st... but the celebration runs from sunset 12/21 until sunrise the 22nd. We celebrate the longest night of the year with friends, staying awake to greet the return of the sun. I will be tired!!

Pagans have as much right to claim this holiday as Christians. Perhaps even more so, as the Christians were rather late in laying claim to it, and tried more than once to reject it. There had been a tradition in the West that Mary bore the child Jesus on the twenty-fifth day, but no one could seem to decide on the month. Finally, in 320 C.E., the Catholic Fathers in Rome decided to make it December, in an effort to co-opt the Mithraic celebration of the Romans and the Yule celebrations of the Celts and Saxons.

If truth be known, "Christmas" has always been more Pagan than Christian. That is why John Calvin and other leaders of the Reformation abhorred it, why the Puritans refused to acknowledge it, much less celebrate it (to them, no day of the year could be more holy than the Sabbath). The holiday was already too closely associated with the birth of older Pagan gods and heroes. Many of them (like Oedipus, Theseus, Hercules, Perseus, Jason, Dionysus, Apollo, Mithra, Horus and even Arthur) possessed a narrative of birth, death, and resurrection that was uncomfortably close to that of Jesus. And to make matters worse, they pre-dated the Christian Savior.

My Christian friends are often quite surprised at how enthusiastically we Pagans celebrate the 'Christmas' season. Even though we prefer to use the word 'Yule', and our celebrations may peak a few days before the 25th, we nonetheless follow many of the traditional customs of the season: decorated trees, caroling, presents, Yule logs, and mistletoe. Some even put up a 'Nativity set', though the 3 figures are Mother Nature, Father Time, and the Baby Sun-God.

Ultimately, of course, the holiday is rooted deeply in the cycle of the year. It is the Winter Solstice that is being celebrated, seed-time of the year, the longest night and shortest day. It is the birthday of the new Sun King, the Son of God -- by whatever name you choose to call him. On this darkest of nights, the Goddess becomes the Great Mother and once again gives birth. And it makes perfect poetic sense that on the longest night of the winter, 'the dark night of our souls', there springs the new spark of hope, the Sacred Fire, the Light of the World.

Blessed Be!