Mother's Night...

Tonight is Mother's Night.  The first night of Yule.

As I ranted yesterday, I celebrate the secular, American holiday of Xmas, rather than the Christian holiday of Christmas.  However, I do also celebrate a religious or spiritual version of the Winter holiday, as well.

For the last twelve years, I have celebrated the pre-Christian Winter holy days of Yule, which begin tonight at sundown, and last until sunrise on January 1st.

As a child, Christmas never felt like just the 24th and 25th to me.  I always felt like it lasted much longer than that.  It felt like it started sometime the week before (both of my parents' birthdays are the week before Christmas, which probably had a little something to do with that - more on that later), and it felt like it ended with New Year's.  It felt like a multi-day event, with the 24th and 25th as the central climax of the whole thing.  It always felt that way, as far back as I can remember, and I celebrated it that way.  I could feel the magick of the holiday begin sometime the week before, and I would always make my parents keep the lights up and lit until New Year's; it didn't feel right to turn them off on the 26th.  That just felt like too abrupt and sudden of an ending to everything.  It didn't feel right.

As a young adult, as part of my exploration of various magickal disciplines, I discovered the pre-Christian pagan traditions of the Northern European cultures.  The gods of the Vikings - Odin, Loki, and Thor, among many others.  I found myself drawn to these traditions; something about them resonated with me, and I began to adopt them as the first religion I had ever chosen to practice.  And no part of this tradition resonated with me more than their Winter holy days of Yule.

I spent many years working within this tradition as one of my primary spiritual practices.  Over the years, I've let go of all of it, as I've grown and moved on.  All except for Yule.  As with Taoism, when I discovered Yule, I realized that I had been celebrating it my entire life, and simply never knew it.  Instantly, it felt right to me.  No matter what other spiritual paths may come and go in my life, I know that I will always celebrate Yule.

In the pagan calendar, Yule is a very magickal time.  In fact, it is a period out of time.  The darkest, coldest time of the year.  A time to gather the entire family together under one roof, and keep safe and warm by a huge fire, to hold back the cold and the dark.  They believed that time stopped at sundown tonight, and started again on sunrise of January 1st (though they didn't call it "January," obviously).  In the interim, was Yule, when the material world and the spiritual world are one and the same, and the spirits of our ancestors and family who have passed on return to us, and we are free to enter their world, as well.  Other spirits, malevolent spirits, are also free to roam our world during this time-out-of-time.  The height of Winter was the most deadly time for the ancient pagans of the North, and they heard frost-giants and dreadful monsters in the howling winds of snowstorms.  Someone who ventured out of the hall, away from the group, away from the hearth-fire, may not come back.  Did they succumb to the cold and the dark and the storms?  Or was it something else?

Most of our "Christmas" traditions come from the celebration of Yule.  When the Christians converted the Northern Europeans, they couldn't get them to stop celebrating Yule, even under penalty of death.  And so instead, they moved the celebration of the birth of their god Jesus from mid- to late-Autumn, up to December 25th - right in the middle of Yule.  And they adopted the traditional Yuletide celebrations into the celebration of their Mass of Christ.

The christmas tree is a pagan tradition.  The yule log.  The wreath.  Mistletoe.  The New Year beginning one week after December 25th.  Leaving gifts in socks that are drying by the fire.  All originally pagan traditions.  Yule, from December 20th through December 31st, is where we get the idea of the "12 days of christmas."

All the parts of xmas that I liked the most - all the non-Jesus parts - turned out to be from this pre-cursor holiday of Yule.  And it covers the entire period of the calendar, from beginning to end, that always felt like the "real" Christmas holiday to me.  It leads up to the climax of the season with Xmas right in the middle, and then winds down to Twelfth Night (New Year's) at the end.  It is perfectly balanced.

Christmas was, by far, my mother's favorite holiday.  And I get my sincere love and appreciation of this season from her.  She was born on December 20th, which turns out to be the first night of Yule, and is traditionally celebrated as "Mother's Night."  It is the night to celebrate all the Mothers in our life, both living and dead, and all the good they've done us, and all they've sacrificed in order for us to be here, right now.

My mother died on December 31st.  She took her own life, in part, to spare us, her family, from having to suffer through her slow and inevitable decline into madness and agonizing death.  She sacrificed herself for us.  She was born on the first night of Yule, Mother's Night, and she died on the last night of Yule, Twelfth Night, the very year that I first came to know about this tradition.  I never got to tell her about Yule, or Mother's Night.

Yule, her favorite holiday, though she never knew it, is a time when our homes are open to the spirits of all those dead that we have loved.  And so every December 20th, I invite her into my home, and I pour her a drink, and I thank her for the life she gave me.

It just feels right.

It always has.



        Disir, I call,        ur-mothers dear,
            Come to our kindred’s hold.

            We give thee Welcome.

        Frigga, I call,         frith-weaver wise,
            Come to our kindred’s hold.

            We give thee Welcome.

        Freyja, I call,        holy and bright,
            Come to our kindred’s hold.

        We give thee Welcome this Mother’s Night.


        Hallowed women of the home,
            I raise this horn to you.

            We give thee Welcome.

        Freyja, riding forth this night,
            Look kindly on our home.

            We give thee Welcome.

        Disir, wights of the wheel,
            Spin us good wyrds to come.

            We give thee Welcome.

        Frigga, who winds the distaff full,
            Fill our house with joy.

        We give thee Welcome this Mother’s Night.