Yule log - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

A Yule log is a large and extremely hard log which is burned in the hearth

Hearth

In common historic and modern usage, a hearth is a brick- or stone-lined fireplace or oven often used for cooking and/or heating. For centuries, the hearth was considered an integral part of a home, often its central or most important feature...

as a part of traditional Yule

Yule

Yule or Yuletide is a winter festival that was initially celebrated by the historical Germanic people as a pagan religious festival, though it was later absorbed into, and equated with, the Christian festival of Christmas. The festival was originally celebrated from late December to early January...

or Christmas

Christmas

Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...

celebrations in several European cultures. It can be a part of the Winter Solstice

Winter solstice

Winter solstice may refer to:* Winter solstice, astronomical event* Winter Solstice , former band* Winter Solstice: North , seasonal songs* Winter Solstice , 2005 American film...

festival or the Twelve Days of Christmas

Twelve Days of Christmas

The Twelve Days of Christmas are the festive days beginning Christmas Day . This period is also known as Christmastide and Twelvetide. The Twelfth Night of Christmas is always on the evening of 5 January, but the Twelfth Day can either precede or follow the Twelfth Night according to which...

, Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve refers to the evening or entire day preceding Christmas Day, a widely celebrated festival commemorating the birth of Jesus of Nazareth that takes place on December 25...

, Christmas Day, or Twelfth Night

Twelfth Night (holiday)

Twelfth Night is a festival in some branches of Christianity marking the coming of the Epiphany and concluding the Twelve Days of Christmas.It is defined by the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary as "the evening of the fifth of January, preceding Twelfth Day, the eve of the Epiphany, formerly the...

.

The expression "Yule log" has also come to refer to log-shaped Christmas cakes, also known as "chocolate logs" or "Bûche de Noël
Bûche de Noël
Bûche de Noël is a traditional dessert served near Christmas in France, Belgium, Canada, Lebanon, Vietnam, and several other francophone countries and former French colonies...

". The Yule log is related to other Christmas and Yuletide traditions such as the Ashen faggot

Ashen faggot

The ashen faggot is an old English Christmas tradition from Devon and Somerset, similar to that of the Yule log and related to the wassail tradition. The wassail party passes around a bundle of ash sticks, twigs or branches—the ashen faggot—bound with green ash withies, which is then...

Etymology

The term "Yule log" is not the only term used to refer to the custom. In the north-east of England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

it was commonly called a "Yule Clog", and in the country's Midlands and West Country

West Country

The West Country is an informal term for the area of south western England roughly corresponding to the modern South West England government region. It is often defined to encompass the historic counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset and the City of Bristol, while the counties of...

, the term "Yule Block" was also used. In the county of Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...

, the term "Gule Block" was found, and in Cornwall

Cornwall

Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...

, the term "Stock of the Mock" was as well. In other parts of the British Isles

British Isles

The British Isles are a group of islands off the northwest coast of continental Europe that include the islands of Great Britain and Ireland and over six thousand smaller isles. There are two sovereign states located on the islands: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and...

, different terms were used, for instance in Wales

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

, the log was often referred to as Y Bloccyn Gwylian, meaning "the Festival Block", whilst in Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

, Yeel Carline (meaning "the Christmas Old Wife") was used, and in Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

, the term, Bloc na Nollaig, which meant "the Christmas Block", was used. The Yule log was originally an entire tree, that was carefully chosen and brought into the house with great ceremony with the purpose being to provide maximum warmth and endurance. In some European traditions, the largest end of the log would be placed into the fire hearth while the rest of the tree stuck out into the room. While references are anecdotal, it seems to be a tradition that morphed into early European Christian tradition of the Twelve Days of Christmas

Twelve Days of Christmas

. Within 20th century Europe and North America was predominantly a reference to the burning of the largest log possible at or around Christmas.

In Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, the log is referred to as Christklotz, Christbrand or Weihnachtsscheit ("Christ-log" or "Christmas-log"). Kindled on Christmas Eve, the log in German tradition functioned as a lightning charm.

Historical origins

The Yule log has frequently been associated with having its origins in the historical Germanic paganism

Germanic paganism

Germanic paganism refers to the theology and religious practices of the Germanic peoples of north-western Europe from the Iron Age until their Christianization during the Medieval period...

which was practiced across northern Europe prior to Christianisation. One of the first people to do so was the English historian Henry Bourne

Henry Bourne (historian)

Henry Bourne was an English historian. He was the son of a tailor and it was planned by his father that he would be apprenticed as a glazier; however his promise was such that he was sent to the Royal Free Grammar School where he flourished, winning a scholarship to Cambridge under the tutelage of...

, who, writing in the 1720s, described the practice occurring in the Tyne valley. Bourne theorised that the practice derives from customs in 6th to 7th century Anglo-Saxon paganism.

Robert Chambers, in his 1832 work, Book of Days
Chambers Book of Days
The Chambers Book of Days was written by the Scottish author Robert Chambers and first published in 1864.A new version was published by Chambers Harrap known as the Chambers Book of...

notes that "two popular observances belonging to Christmas are more especially derived from the worship of our pagan ancestors—the hanging up of the mistletoe

Mistletoe

Mistletoe is the common name for obligate hemi-parasitic plants in several families in the order Santalales. The plants in question grow attached to and within the branches of a tree or shrub.-Mistletoe in the genus Viscum:...

and the burning of the Yule log." James George Frazer in his work on anthropology, The Golden Bough
The Golden Bough
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion is a wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion, written by Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer . It first was published in two volumes in 1890; the third edition, published 1906–15, comprised twelve volumes...

(p. 736) holds that "the ancient fire-festival of the winter solstice appears to survive" in the Yule log custom. Frazer records traditions from England, France, among the South Slavs

South Slavs

The South Slavs are the southern branch of the Slavic peoples and speak South Slavic languages. Geographically, the South Slavs are native to the Balkan peninsula, the southern Pannonian Plain and the eastern Alps...

, in Central Germany (Meiningen

Meiningen

Meiningen is a town in Germany - located in the southern part of the state of Thuringia and is the district seat of Schmalkalden-Meiningen. It is situated on the river Werra....

) and western Switzerland (the Bernese Jura

Jura mountains

The Jura Mountains are a small mountain range located north of the Alps, separating the Rhine and Rhone rivers and forming part of the watershed of each...

).

However, some historians have disagreed with this claim, for instance the Swedish folklorist Carl Wilhelm von Sydow attacked Frazer's theories, claiming that the Yule log had never had any religious significance, and was instead simply a festive decoration with practical uses.

Great Britain

Because there are no accounts of the custom in Great Britain

Great Britain

Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...

prior to the 17th century, some historians and folklorists have theorised that it was not an ancient British custom but was in fact imported into Britain from continental Europe in the early modern period, possibly from Flanders

Flanders

Flanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp...

in Belgium

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

, where the tradition thrived in this period.

The first mention of the Yule log in Britain is a written account by the clergyman Robert Herrick

Robert Herrick (poet)

Robert Herrick was a 17th-century English poet.-Early life:Born in Cheapside, London, he was the seventh child and fourth son of Julia Stone and Nicholas Herrick, a prosperous goldsmith....

, from the 1620s or 1630s. Herrick called the tradition a "Christmas log" and said that it was brought into the farmhouse by a group of males, who were then rewarded with free beer

Beer

Beer is the world's most widely consumed andprobably oldest alcoholic beverage; it is the third most popular drink overall, after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of sugars, mainly derived from malted cereal grains, most commonly malted barley and malted wheat...

from the farmer's wife. Herrick claimed that the fire used to burn the log was always started with a remnant from the log that had been burned in the previous year's festivities. He also said that the log's role was primarily one of bringing prosperity and protection from evil - by keeping the remnant of the log all the year long the protection was said to remain across the year.

The Yule log was not only seen as a magical

Magic (paranormal)

Magic is the claimed art of manipulating aspects of reality either by supernatural means or through knowledge of occult laws unknown to science. It is in contrast to science, in that science does not accept anything not subject to either direct or indirect observation, and subject to logical...

protective amulet in traditional British rural culture. There are many reports of rivalries occurring between members of a community as to who had the largest log.

The traditions of the Yule log died out in Britain in the latter 19th and early 20th century because of, according to historian Ronald Hutton

Ronald Hutton

Ronald Hutton is an English historian who specializes in the study of Early Modern Britain, British folklore, pre-Christian religion and contemporary Paganism. A reader in the subject at the University of Bristol, Hutton has published fourteen books and has appeared on British television and radio...

, "the reduction in farm labour and the disappearance of the old-fashioned open hearths", however the Bûche de Noël

Bûche de Noël

Bûche de Noël is a traditional dessert served near Christmas in France, Belgium, Canada, Lebanon, Vietnam, and several other francophone countries and former French colonies...

dessert has become a Christmas tradition in the UK, as in many French speaking places.

In English folklore, Father Christmas

Father Christmas

Father Christmas is the name used in many English-speaking countries for a figure associated with Christmas. A similar figure with the same name exists in several other countries, including France , Spain , Brazil , Portugal , Italy , Armenia , India...

was often depicted carrying a Yule Log.

French-speaking Europe

In France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

and Wallonia, and thence also in Quebec

Quebec

Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....

and in Lebanon

Lebanon

Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...

, the Bûche de Noël ("christmas log") is a traditional dessert, in origin a facsimile of the actual yule log. The tradition of the yule log was discontinued as large fireplaces became an increasingly rarer feature of the average living room.
The dessert is usually in the form of a large rectangular yellow cake spread with frosting and rolled up into a cylinder - one end is then lopped off and stood on end to indicate the rings of the "log."
It is not known when the dessert, or its name, originated. It is known to have existed by 1945, and apparently, a tradition of jam rolls served at Christmas is attested for Poitou-Charentes

Poitou-Charentes

Poitou-Charentes is an administrative region in central western France comprising four departments: Charente, Charente-Maritime, Deux-Sèvres and Vienne. The regional capital is Poitiers.-Politics:The regional council is composed of 56 members...

since the 19th century.

Southern Europe

In the most traditional of the Catalan homes, the old custom of "fer cagar el tió

Tió de Nadal

The Tió de Nadal , also known simply as Tió or Tronca and popularly called Caga tió , is a character in Catalan mythology relating to a Christmas tradition widespread in Catalonia...

" is still followed for Christmas. A log is wrapped with a blanket several days in advance of Christmas and is "fed" grass. On Christmas Eve the log is repeatedly hit in order to make the log go "cagar." The blanket is then removed to reveal the gifts that have been "expelled" by the log.

In Tuscany

Tuscany

Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....

, there is a Festa del Ceppo ("festival of the log").

Balkans

In Croatia, Christmas Eve is called Badnjak (Christmas Eve Day: Badnji dan, Christmas Eve night: Badnja večer), after the traditional log that is cut on Christmas Eve and lit in the hearth of the home in the evening. In villages, the father of the family cuts down a piece of wood from a tree at dawn, reciting the Lord's Prayer

Lord's Prayer

The Lord's Prayer is a central prayer in Christianity. In the New Testament of the Christian Bible, it appears in two forms: in the Gospel of Matthew as part of the discourse on ostentation in the Sermon on the Mount, and in the Gospel of Luke, which records Jesus being approached by "one of his...

and making the sign of the cross, invoking God to bless the family. In the cities, logs are usually bought instead of cut down. The log is brought to the home, but left inside until the evening, where it is brought in and placed in the hearth or fireplace. Holy water is then poured on the log, usually accompanied by the Apostle's Creed. It is then lit and the father praises Jesus

Jesus

Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

and welcomes Christmas Eve.

The badnjak is a central feature in the traditional Serbian Christmas celebration

Serbian Christmas traditions

The Serbian Orthodox Church uses the traditional Julian Calendar. From 1900 until 2100, the Julian calendar is 13 days behind the Gregorian and therefore Serbian Christmas Day falls on 7 January of the Gregorian calendar...

. It is the log that a family solemnly brings into the house and places on the fire in the evening of Christmas Eve. The tree used for the badnjak, preferably a young and strait oak, is ceremoniously felled in the early morning of Christmas Eve. Traditionally the head of the family was sent dressed in his best clothes to cut down an oak, elm, or pear tree. That tree is used as the badnjak. A prayer for forgiveness was necessary before it could be chopped down with three strikes with axe, and carried on one's right shoulder as it is not allowed to touch the ground. The burning of the log is accompanied by prayers to God so that the coming year may bring much happiness, love, luck, riches, and food. It would burn on through Christmas Day, whether rekindled or kept burning from the Eve. The first person to visit the family on that day should strike the burning badnjak with a poker or a branch to make sparks fly from it, at the same time uttering a wish that the happiness, prosperity, health, and joy of the family be as abundant as the sparks. The ideal environment to fully carry out these customs is the traditional multi-generation country household. Since most Serbs

Serbs

The Serbs are a South Slavic ethnic group of the Balkans and southern Central Europe. Serbs are located mainly in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and form a sizable minority in Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia and Slovenia. Likewise, Serbs are an officially recognized minority in...

today live in towns and cities, the badnjak is symbolically represented by several leaved oak twigs that can be bought at marketplaces or received in churches. The origin of the badnjak is explained by events surrounding the Nativity of Jesus Christ. Scholars, however, regard these customs as practices inherited from the old Slavic religion

Slavic mythology

Slavic mythology is the mythological aspect of the polytheistic religion that was practised by the Slavs before Christianisation.The religion possesses many common traits with other religions descended from the Proto-Indo-European religion....

.

In Bulgaria

Bulgaria

Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

, it is an important part of Christmas Eve preparations. Traditionally а young man of the family was sent dressed in his best clothes to cut down an oak, elm, or pear tree. That tree is used as the Budnik (:bg:Бъдник). A prayer for forgiveness was necessary before it could be chopped down and carried on one's right shoulder as it is not allowed to touch the ground. An indication of the importance of the ritual is that Christmas Eve translates to Budnik or Budnik Eve (:bg:Бъдни вечер) in Bulgaria. In some regions, upon the man's return he asks "Do you glorify the Young God?" three times and receive a positive answer "We glorify Him, welcome". After that a hole is bored in one end of the badnik and filled with Chrism

Chrism

Chrism , also called "Myrrh" , Holy anointing oil, or "Consecrated Oil", is a consecrated oil used in the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Eastern Rite Catholic, Oriental Orthodox, in the Assyrian Church of the East, and in Old-Catholic churches, as well as Anglican churches in the administration...

made of wine, cooking oil, and incense. The hole is plugged, and that end of the log is wrapped with a white linen cloth before the badnik is festively burned on the hearth.
The log is considered to possess special healing powers and the ritual includes songs and uttering of wishes as the log is lit much like the Serbian ritual described above. The log has to burn all night and it is believed that its warmth and light symbolise the coming of Christ as well as providing a warm welcome to Virgin Mary and the family's ancestors who are believed to be guests at the table according to traditions in some regions. Sometimes the fire is put off using wine in the morning. Remains of the log are cherished and sometimes used to make personal crosses, also to make a plough and ashes are simply spread over a field or vineyard to induce better yields.

External links

Several variations of Yule Logs created by Pastry Chef Eric Hubert
"The Yule Log", a page with information about the Yule log

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Etymology

Historical origins

Great Britain

French-speaking Europe

Southern Europe

Balkans

See also

External links