#hollidays

Yule is anchored to the winter solstice, the longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere. A moment when the sun appears to pause, catch its breath, and maybe come back. The name comes from Old Norse jól, a midwinter festival that involved:

Feasting

Honoring the dead

And a terrifying divine ghost stampede across the sky called the Wild Hunt

(You know, holiday stuff.) Yule didn’t just survive Christianity. It put on a new mask and haunted the place.

What we’re actually celebrating is the invocation of deep dark, the first flicker of returning light, the tangled threads of ancestors, and that weird liminal zone where nothing grows and everything just... waits.

To practice Yule isn’t to cosplay Vikings or rebuild a perfect past. It’s to meet winter where it is. In your body, your land, your longing. And ask: How do I move through the dark?

🜮 Yule: History Beneath the Holiday

Not a preserved rite. A memory that shapeshifts. Still breathing. Still loud.

✦ Etymology & Early Roots

So, “Yule.” Not invented by Christians. Not code for “Witchmas.” The word comes from Old Norse jól (and Old English ġeōl), probably from Proto-Germanic jehwlą, meaning “winter feast” or “wheel-turning party.” Some linguists think it’s connected to hjul, meaning wheel, as in “yo it’s the sun’s seasonal U-turn.”

In the Norse world, jól was not one tidy night with matching napkins. It was a whole multi-day rager for midwinter survival. Odin was out here cosplaying Death Santa, riding across the sky with the Wild Hunt. Which is basically the spirit version of an air raid siren made of wolves, ancestors, and unresolved grief.

Meanwhile, early Anglo-Saxon and Germanic folks were:

Feasting like their survival depended on it (because it did)

Pouring ale for gods and local spirits

Talking to their dead

Making oaths over fire

Doing midwinter divination to figure out how bad the next year would suck

Did this line up perfectly with the solstice? Nah. Calendars were weird and regional. People were just vibing with the land, so Yule happened when it felt right. That’s the point. Early Yule was a relationship, not a timestamp. Not one-size-fits-all, and definitely not curated for the feed.

✦ The Yule Log and Fire Customs

Before it was a Pinterest mood board or a sugar bomb, it was a full-on metaphysical event. You know that looping video of a fireplace on Netflix? Yeah. That’s your great-great-great-ancestor’s sacred fire altar now being used as digital ambiance. Progress is weird.

The original Yule log wasn’t just seasonal decor. It was the chosen one. Oak or ash, maybe carved with runes, maybe soaked in ale, salt, or blood. Burned slowly over days, and the leftovers? Saved like sacred Wi-Fi for next year’s fire. Ancestral flame continuity. Year Two: Electric Boogaloo.

In some traditions, the log wasn’t just wood; it was a spell. A container of intentions, protection, luck, and probably that one cousin’s slightly chaotic oath to change everything this year (again).

These days, witches might:

Burn a candle over several nights as a mini-log

Carve sigils into a small stick and set it aflame

Bake a chocolate Yule log and charge it with chaotic sugar magic (do not underestimate the spell potential of frosting)

Whether you’ve got a roaring hearth, a single tealight, or just the last half-dead lighter in your junk drawer, this is fire as portal. Fire as promise. Fire as the voice that says, ‘Burn it down and start over’.

✦ Christian Adaptation & the “Twelve Days”

Because nothing says “we see your ancient festival” like repackaging it with saints and carols.

Christianity spread across Europe like a well-dressed colonizing fungus, took one look at Yule, and said, 'Nice feast. Shame if someone... stole it.'

So Yule didn’t disappear; it got absorbed. Transfigured. Slapped with new labels. By the medieval period, it had shape-shifted into what we now call the Twelve Days of Christmas (Dec 25 to Jan 6), which was a lot less “baby in a manger” and a lot more “liminal chaos zone filled with spirits and social anarchy.”

No joke, this stretch of time was feral.

Ghosts roamed.

The Wild Hunt howled.

Social roles got flipped (peasants became kings for a day, and nobody liked that except the peasants).

People told scary stories, invoked old gods in secret, and tried not to get possessed by seasonal depression or literal spirits.

Modern witches are out here reclaiming this twelve-day stretch like, “Why yes, I will do a twelve-day spell cycle. One day for grief, one for rebirth, one for ancestral screaming, and maybe one for baking bread and sobbing gently into it.”

Reminder: Yule isn’t just one night. It’s an unfolding. A spiral. A witchy Advent calendar stuffed with transformation and feral vibes.

✦ Solstice Markers Beyond Europe

The sun is out here doing weird stuff everywhere, and (gasp) other cultures noticed.

So, fun fact: the winter solstice is not just a vaguely pagan European thing with pine trees and vibes. It is an actual astronomical event that shows up all over the world. And surprise! People everywhere were like, “Hey, the sun is dying. We should probably do something magical about that.”

Here’s how some non-European traditions mark the longest night:

𖼝 Dongzhi (East Asia): The Winter Solstice festival celebrates the return of yang energy. Families gather, eat warm food (especially sweet glutinous rice balls called tangyuan), and lean into themes of reunion, balance, and cosmic recharging. It’s giving “cozy resilience and quiet power-up.”

۞ Shab-e Yalda (Iran): This is the longest night vigil. People stay up with pomegranates, nuts, poetry, and storytelling to keep the dark at bay until the sun returns. It’s romantic, ancestral, and extremely goth in the best way.

𓇳 Inti Raymi (Quechua/Inca): In the Southern Hemisphere, their midwinter solstice is in June, and it hits different. This celebration honors Inti, the sun god, with offerings, dances, and ritual processions. It’s not about dormancy — it’s about renewal through ceremony and fire.

𓂀 Kemetian / Ancient Egyptian Temples: These temples were built like cosmic clocks. Alignments with the solstice sun meant divine rebirth, solar resurrection, and that glorious moment when the architecture of a civilization high-key channels the literal sky. These aren’t just aesthetic menu options. They’re living cosmologies, still humming with power.

So no, don’t just slap pomegranate seeds on your altar because you saw someone post it and thought it was cute. These traditions are sacred and specific. They’re not universal metaphors for “winter vibes.”

What they do remind us, though, is this: The solstice is real. It is a turning point that cultures across the globe have felt, tracked, and ritualized. The witch’s job isn’t to collect them like Pokémon. It’s about listening to time, honoring the rhythms where you are, and participating with care.

✦ From Wicca to Chaos Calendars

The Wheel of the Year is made up. But like, in a helpful way.

Let’s be clear: the modern eightfold Wheel of the Year (Yule, Imbolc, Ostara, Beltane, etc.) is not ancient. It’s basically a magical group project from the 20th century. Gardner and Nichols looked at a bunch of folk traditions and said, 'What if we made this a seasonal pie chart?' And honestly? It works fine.

If you vibe with it, amazing. Roll with it. Light the candles. Decorate the wheel. Have your sabbat feasts. But also: you don’t have to pretend it descended from the druids on a flaming oak of cosmic truth.

Because guess what. You can make your own calendar. You can track time by your dreams, your grief, your local ecology, or whatever weird sacred rhythm is pulsing through your bones.

For example, your solstice might look like: ✧ The first snowfall that actually sticks ✧ The last time your period shows up before the new year ✧ Your grandma’s death day that always feels thin-veiled ✧ The final mugwort harvest before the ground freezes ✧ That one December night when your dreams last six years and the moon side-eyes you the whole time

Yule doesn’t have to be on December 21. It doesn’t even have to be called Yule. The solstice is a real celestial moment. But the spell? The name? The ritual? That’s yours to build. Some of the best witches you’ll ever meet built their calendars out of broken clocks and pure feral instinct.

❂ Solstice as Threshold

Not just a holiday. A cosmic soft reset button. Bonus: metaphysics.

The solstice isn’t just a vibe. It’s not “yay, more sun soon” and then back to your peppermint mocha. It’s an occult event. Like, astronomically real. Celestially spicy. The sun literally hits pause.

The word “solstice” comes from Latin solstitium, meaning “sun stands still.” Because from Earth’s perspective, it does. It hangs low. Suspended. Hovering on the edge of reversal. That’s not just poetic. That’s spell fuel.

Across so many cultures, this moment wasn’t just marked; it was celebrated. It was mythologized. Egyptians, Romans, Mesoamericans, Norse, Inca. Everyone out there is watching the sky go full drama queen. And why? Because the solstice doesn’t ask permission. It turns the whole year on its axis and says, 'Time to pivot, babes.'

In myth, this moment shows up as:

The death of a solar deity 

A spark stolen back from the underworld

A child of light born in the dark

A fire lit in the bones, not the sky

So what do witches do with that? We treat it like the threshold it is. We don’t just decorate it. We cross it. With spells, stillness, songs, silence, or whatever weird tool you’ve got in your witch kit.

Whether you’re a chaos witch, a folk practitioner, a cosmic cryptid, or just out here trying to mark time without crying in a shopping mall parking lot, the solstice is yours to meet.

You don’t need tradition to validate it. You just need to notice the moment the sun stops moving, and ask what part of you wants to move next.

🜃 Yule as Spell, Not Spectacle

Midwinter magic isn’t here to make your Pinterest board pop. It’s here to rearrange your soul in the dark.

Yes, candles are cute. Yes, evergreen garlands are aesthetically pleasing. Yes, you can totally make a cinnamon-scented altar and bless your cat with juniper smoke. But that’s not the root of Yule.

At its core, Yule is not just seasonal décor and warm drinks. It’s a spell for survival. It’s the work of sitting in the longest night and refusing to flinch. It’s the part of the year where the light almost gives up, and you refuse to let it.

Yule asks you to practice:

Dying with dignity (metaphorically, probably)

Letting go of the sun you used to know

Cultivating warmth that doesn’t come from external validation or literal photons

Sitting in the dark without demanding it makes you feel better

Witnessing the first flicker of return without kicking the door open too soon

It’s rest. Deep, defiant, anti-productivity rest. The kind that spits in the face of hustle culture.

In a world screaming 'grind till you die and smile about it,' Yule is over here whispering, 'What if you just cocooned for a while and ignored your inbox until spring?'

And you don’t need a snowy forest. Nor a perfect altar setup or a coven in matching robes. You don't even need a name for it. You just need to notice when the light changes, and decide what you’re going to do about it.

⚒︎ Ways to Work with Yule

Spells for when the sun yeets itself into seasonal hibernation and you're just trying to vibe through it.

This isn’t a checklist. It’s not homework. It’s a spell menu. Pick what resonates. Mix it up. Add glitter. Add grief. Yule isn’t about being impressive. It’s about staying warm in the quiet.

Here’s how you can work with it:

Light a single candle at sunset and keep it burning till dawn. Don’t do anything else. Just vibe with the fire. Stare into it like it’s holding the universe’s secrets. It probably is.

Burn your grief letters and dump the ashes in snow, dirt, or straight into the void. Let the earth take what you’re done carrying.

Leave offerings for house spirits like you’re bribing your way into their good graces. Bread, salt, milk, or that midnight snack you swore you wouldn’t eat.

Sit with an obsidian mirror or a bowl of dark water. Gaze in. Ask the dark what it knows. Hope it doesn’t roast you. If it does, you probably needed it.

Listen for the Wild Hunt. Or just name what’s been chasing you all year. Put a bell on it. Banish it. Feed it. Your call.

Smoke cleanse your home with evergreen like you’re airing out the ghost of seasonal depression. Spoiler: it’s still in the attic, but now it smells better.

Crochet or knot a ritual piece. Infuse it with intentions. Then unravel it at Imbolc like you’re dismantling old timelines. Bonus points for dramatic music.

And if none of that feels right? You’re allowed to do absolutely nothing.

Seriously. Just noticing the solstice happened is enough. Even if you’re in bed under three blankets with a half-eaten cookie. That still counts.

𐃏 Rewilding the Wheel

Because not every witch lives in a pine forest or feels spiritually aligned with snowflakes and wassail.

Yule is powerful. But it’s not one-size-fits-all. Some practitioners are like: “The light returns!” Others are like: “The sun never left, it’s literally 90 degrees and my air conditioner is possessed.” Both are valid.

Not everyone lives in a climate where the sun’s absence is felt the same way. Not everyone’s body follows the same seasonal rhythm. Not everyone descends in winter. Not everyone wants to pretend they’re a medieval peasant in a linen robe.

This is where chaos witches, urban witches, queer witches, and just plain tired witches start remixing the calendar. You can build your own ritual year out of whatever actually feels sacred to you. That might look like:

Celebrating your "new year" on your birthday, divorce finalization date, or the day you found out your bloodline isn’t cursed, just dramatic

Honoring your ancestors in the dry season, or during mushroom bloom, or whenever your family ghosts are loudest

Turning the solstice into a ritual to release capitalist holiday expectations, gender performance, or emotional burnout wrapped in tinsel

Making a personal sabbat out of your flare-up week, your dead friend’s favorite season, or the one night a year your house is finally quiet

The solstice is real. The turning point in the sky is real. But your response? That’s art. That’s spellwork. That’s yours. The Wheel of the Year is a map, not a contract. Use it, remix it, or set it on fire and draw your own spiral in the dirt. You’re not late. You’re not wrong. You’re just listening to a different rhythm.

☸︎ Part Ⅱ of The Witch's Year ∙ Follow for the full series! #The Witch's Year

✍︎ Further Reading & Sources

✧ History & Folklore

Ronald Hutton. The Stations of the Sun

Carlo Ginzburg. Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath

Emma Wilby. Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits

Éva Pócs. Between the Living and the Dead

✧ Modern Witchcraft & Chaos Rites

Aidan Wachter. Six Ways

Byron Ballard. Roots, Branches & Spirits

Starhawk. The Earth Path

Sarah Anne Lawless. Blog archives

✧ Cultural & Feminist Critique

Sylvia Federici. Caliban and the Witch