The Twelve Days of Yule: Ancient Traditions That Inspired Christmas
The Twelve Days of Christmas may be familiar, but did you know this popular holiday tradition has ancient roots in Yule, a winter solstice celebration? Long before the advent of Christmas, the Twelve Days of Yule marked a time of joy, reflection, and honoring nature's cycles. Today we are going to explore the rich history and customs of the Twelve Days of Yule, providing inspiration for how you can incorporate these traditions into your celebrations today.
The Origins of Yule
Yule, or "Jól" in Old Norse, was celebrated by Germanic and Norse peoples to honor the winter solstice—the longest night of the year and the return of the sun. These twelve days were a time for feasting, storytelling, honoring ancestors, and offering blessings for the year ahead. The Twelve Days were also closely tied to the lunar calendar, bridging the gap between the old and new year.
As Christianity spread through Europe, many of Yule’s customs were adopted and transformed into Christmas traditions. However, Yule still holds deep significance for modern pagans, witches, and those who follow nature-based spiritual practices.
The Twelve Days of Yule: Day-by-Day Traditions
Each day of Yule carries unique symbolism and offers opportunities for reflection and celebration. Below I have provided a breakdown of each day, the traditional form of celebration, and a modern way you can honor the day, as part of your Yule celebration.
Day 1: The Winter Solstice (Dec 20-23)
The darkest night of the year marks the rebirth of the sun.
Tradition: Light a candle or bonfire to welcome back the light.
Modern Practice: Reflect on what you want to let go of and what you hope to grow in the coming year.
Day 2: Honoring the Ancestors
Pay respects to those who came before you.
Tradition: Share stories of family or leave offerings on an ancestor altar.
Modern Practice: Write a letter to a departed loved one or share their memory during a meal.
Day 3: Feasting and Gratitude
Celebrate the abundance of the harvest (stored for winter).
Tradition: Prepare a special meal to share with loved ones.
Modern Practice: Cook or bake something with intention and gratitude.
Day 4: Rest and Reflection
A day for stillness and quiet.
Tradition: Meditate on the darkness and what it teaches us.
Modern Practice: Take time to journal or create art that reflects your inner thoughts.
Day 5: The Evergreen Symbol
Evergreens symbolize eternal life.
Tradition: Decorate your home with pine, holly, or ivy.
Modern Practice: Craft a wreath or garland for your home.
Day 6: Gift-Giving
A symbol of generosity and community.
Tradition: Exchange small gifts with loved ones or give to those in need.
Modern Practice: Make homemade or meaningful gifts.
Day 7: Honoring Nature Spirits
Recognize the spirits of the earth and your surroundings.
Tradition: Leave offerings for the land or animals.
Modern Practice: Spend time outdoors, connecting with the natural world.
Day 8: Fertility and Prosperity
Focus on abundance for the coming year.
Tradition: Perform rituals or blessings for good fortune.
Modern Practice: Plant seeds indoors or make a prosperity charm.
Day 9: Storytelling
Share myths, legends, and family stories.
Tradition: Gather around the fire to tell tales.
Modern Practice: Read aloud a favorite story or write your own.
Day 10: Fire and Cleansing
Use fire to banish negativity and cleanse your space.
Tradition: Perform a fire ritual or smudge with herbs.
Modern Practice: Light candles with intentional affirmations.
Day 11: Divination
Seek guidance for the year ahead.
Tradition: Use runes, tarot, or other tools of divination.
Modern Practice: Reflect on what you want to manifest in the new year.
Day 12: The Farewell Feast
Conclude the celebrations with a communal feast.
Tradition: Offer gratitude for the past year and hope for the next.
Modern Practice: Host a small gathering or create a ritual to close out the season.
Bringing Yule Into Modern Life
Even if you don’t celebrate all twelve days, there are many ways to embrace the spirit of Yule. Light candles, meditate, honor nature, or gather with loved ones. These small acts can connect you to the cycles of the earth and the magic of the season.
How Will You Celebrate Yule?
Yule is a time to reflect, give thanks, and embrace hope for the future. What traditions resonate with you? Share your thoughts and celebrations in the comments.
Planning for Yule
With Yule around the corner I have found myself wondering how to celebrate this year. Because I want to share my path with others, I have decided that I want to do a series of YouTube videos, blog posts, and social media posts, that will highlight the 12 Days of Yule. These posts will start on December 20th and go through December 31st. I think this will be a fun challenge for me and will give me an opportunity to branch out more into content creation and sharing my path with others. I hope that this will be something that adds value and inspiration for those who see and interact with my content.
Changing Seasons
It’s so interesting to me how fall feels like one of the most rejuvenating seasons that there is. I absolutely relish every second of it. It’s been almost a year since I have last made an entry on this site and I have, admittedly, slacked off. I am learning slowly how to juggle studying to be an herbalist, maintaining my spiritual practice, building a robust garden, figuring out the social media business landscape, AND continuing to work my day job. I have been busy.
As the fall circles around, I find myself in a place of stillness, ready to tackle the things that I have been putting off. One of those things is this website. I hope to post more regularly and bring to you, the reader, insight into the natural world, the path of the green witch, and to inspire you on your journey. Change is coming. I hope you will join me on that journey.
February Musings
It’s wild to me that it’s already the end of February. Time seems to fly by so quickly the older I get. I know that the past couple of months I have been slacking on this blog but a lot has been happening behind the scenes for The Northern Mage.
To date, I have gathered all of my equipment and successfully started The Northern Mage YouTube Channel. Those videos will soon be posted to this website, as will links to my podcast “The Crooked Broomstick”. I have also created a lengthy list of topics that I want to cover in both video, blog, and podcast format, and I have begun researching several of those topics and planning out that content. My hope is that I will create a robust online treasure trove where followers will be able to find exactly what they are looking for, in the format they prefer.
In addition to the above, I have spent time starting down my own path of self growth and education. For years….and I do mean years…I have explored the world of Tarot and the world of Herbalism. These are two topics that interest me greatly and are very near and dear to my heart. Despite spending years studying these topics, I have never done any formal education around them. This year that will all change. I have signed up for an online Tarot course, through a reader that I have followed for years now and been inspired by countless times. I have also signed up for an herbalism course through the Herbal Academy. It has been refreshing during the first few lessons to see that I know a lot of the information they have already supplied, which means that my independent studying has not been for nothing. The things I did not know have been a wonderful thing to learn and I am adding them to my ever growing book of notes on herbalism.
When I started 2024 I knew that my main goal was going to be to learn more about myself and to lean more into who I am. As I embark on these new paths, I feel like I am on the right course. I am so incredibly excited for what this year has to offer and I hope that my hard work and dedication to The Northern Mage project will become something that will be beneficial not just to myself but to others as well.
Yule Planning & Tree LightingS
Along the Klickitat River. Family hike 11/25/2023
I have to admit that I am not really a Christmas time type of gal. Halloween has always been my bread and butter. However, as I get older I find that I have been able to find more joy in the holiday season. (Que that scene from The Grinch where his heart starts growing…lol). The main reason I have been able to finally tap into this holiday spirit is because of the fact that I have stepped outside of the mainstream and started writing my own holiday traditions. That is why, as I mentioned in my November Musings post, that I started celebrating Yule a few years ago. Yule feels so much more authentic to me and it feels wonderful to embrace the more natural aspects of the holiday season.
That all being said…we do live in a Christmas culture and I can’t help but find myself fawning over light displays and laughing at funny inflatable yard decorations. A neighbor of mine had an inflatable Santa on a jet ski last year. That might be one of the best inflatable decorations I have seen to date. I personally do not decorate the outside of my house for Christmas or Yule. Mostly because I put so much effort into my ever expanding Halloween display and I’m always a little burnt out after October. But this year, I found myself toying around with the idea of doing something.
A couple months ago the local museum shared a black and white picture of a tree lighting the town used to do. I’m not sure when the last tree lighting took place, but there certainly hasn’t been one in all the years I have been here. Which, I guess you can take with a grain of salt because I’ve only lived here 5 years now. But I saw the post and immediately commented that it would be a wonderful thing to bring back to town. No matter how big of a Grinch I have been during the holiday’s, I have always loved a good tree lighting ceremony. I have seen the tree lighting at Town Center Plaza in Kansas City, Missouri. My boys and I have traveled to Leavenworth, WA for their annual Bavarian style Christmas celebration and tree lighting and my oldest minion and I have even feasted our eyes on the Christmas tree display at Rockefeller Center in New York City.
The Klickitat Washington Community Christmas Tree. Picture courtesy the Klickitat Historical Museum Facebook Page.
I waited patiently to see if anyone else might take up the mantel of bringing the tradition back to town and no one else took the bait. So I approached the town council and now, here I am, planning the local holiday tree lighting ceremony. And can I just say…it has brought out a whole new side of me. I am determined to have the best lit Christmas tree the town has ever seen. I want so many lights, it blinds people as they drive by. I don’t know how many people will attend the ceremony. We are a tiny town of maybe 250 residents. But I am hoping that it will add a little sparkle and joy to everyone’s holiday season. And it will keep me connected to my community. Something that I struggle with around holiday’s that I am not particularly fond of. Christmas does not carry too many fond memories for me so I am hoping, as I continue to age and expand my world view, that I can make memories that will help me to look forward to this time of year.
Beyond that, I am still diligently working through my Yule plans. Garland has been hung. Dried oranges have been strung up and placed along the garland. The tree is up and several other projects are under way. If you are interested in how I put together my garland or dried oranges, please check out my TikTok account. I will also start uploading YouTube videos soon. I guess you could say that something in me has changed this year. I am looking forward to the season. I haven’t felt this way in a long time and I am almost certain that embracing Yule has been the catalyst for this change in feelings.
November Musings
This year has seemed to go by so incredibly fast. Just a couple short months ago I was picking the last bouquet from my garden and lamenting the fact that the gardening season was over and fall was on its way. Halloween and Samhain have also blazed past, so quickly that I found myself feeling sad Halloween night that it was all over already. Now I find myself facing down Yule.
I must admit that the Christmas season has never been my favorite. Even as a kid. I never connected with it and as I hid away my witchy ways I remember telling those around me that as soon as my kids grew up and moved out, I probably wouldn’t celebrate Christmas ever again.
Once I began to be more open with my pull towards witchcraft, I made the decision that I was going to celebrate Yule instead. For four years now my boys and I have spent Yule eating way more food than is comfortable, watching holiday movies, and opening one gift each. Since their father celebrates Christmas, we do save the majority of the gifts for Christmas morning so they can open them with their dad when he is over. I was always adamant that I would not raise my children with a religion. When I lost my faith in Christianity and came to realize I never really believed in it, I found myself listless for the longest time. I never wanted that for my boys. The possibility they would one day lose their faith too and not know how to process it. So on Yule the only witchcraft tradition I include them in is a small fire bowl ritual where we write down on a piece of paper what we want to release from the past year and burn it. Each year they ask if we will be doing this again and I feel as though they appreciate it. Needless to say it will be on our list again this year.
Beyond that there will be other things I do for myself that evening, which I will outline in future blog posts for the holiday. But I will say that choosing to celebrate Yule instead of Christmas has become one of the best choices I have made along this journey. Yule speaks to me in a way that Christmas never could.
To me Yule is about our connection with nature. We bring trees in our homes and logs to place candles in. Garlands of dried oranges and cinnamon are common decorations and the snow…oh the snow…the way it floats down from the sky is magical in it’s own way. Yule is about finding warmth in the midst of extreme cold. It’s about spending meaningful time with the family. It is not about the gifts and the commercialism that haunts Christmas and makes it so unenjoyable. Yule is comforting in a way I can’t explain. Like being wrapped in a warm, fuzzy blanket and curling up in front of a fire to enjoy the warmth. Yule will be the only thing that I celebrate moving forward and I have no regrets about that at all.
Welcome to the Northern Mage
Welcome to my home away from home.
I am so happy that you found your way to my home away from home. The online space where I share my authentic self with the world. I am an eclectic witch living in the Pacific Northwest. My magical bent is towards Green Witchcraft, although I have an interest in topics that fall under Hedge Witchery. I see this blog as a space where I can share my musings on the craft with you.
What I appreciate about the magical community is that over the last two decades, I have seen a shift from extreme gatekeeping and the idea you could only be a witch if you were part of a coven, to a more inclusive and accepting world where one could practice their craft in a way that spoke to them. While gatekeeping does still happen, the strides that have been made are vast. I firmly believe that the more we share knowledge with one another, the stronger we will grow as a community and the greater our collective power will become. I am proud to be a part of this movement and hope to add to it in a way that can be useful and inspirational to others who may be new to the craft or seeking to come out of the broom closet.
I sincerely hope you will find the posts I share here to be useful to you as you explore your craft and the path that stretches out in front of you.
