Sabbats Almanac: Samhain to Mabon - Kristoffer Hughes 2018

Yuletide Traditions by Peg Aloi
Yule

DESPITE BEING RAISED CATHOLIC, my family were not terribly insistent churchgoers, and Christmas often felt like a very secular, if not Pagan, affair. We traipsed through snowy woods to chop down our Christmas tree. We strung popcorn and cranberries onto string to decorate the tree, then after the tree came down, we hung them outside for the birds. We cut out sugar cookies in the shapes of reindeer, stars, holly leaves, and candles, and decorated them with frosting, colored sugars, sprinkles, and tiny silver balls. We’d sing carols while my mom played on her Hammond organ. We dug traditional treats out of our stockings: shelled nuts, oranges, chocolates. If we went to midnight mass, where I mostly remembered beautiful singing from the choir, that I joined with happily, my siblings and I were allowed to walk the ten or so blocks home, a magical time of night often with snow glittering like sugar in the streets. The colored lights on peoples’ doors and shutters and the candles in their windows all looked so festive and inviting; we’d pass people getting into their cars after holiday dinners or themselves returning home from mass, maybe to open a gift or share some hot chocolate. Laughter rang like bells, calls of “Merry Christmas!” wafted across streets, people waved to strangers. The neighborhood was a community united in common celebration of family bonding and pleasing rituals of food and drink, games and fun. If it was snowing, we helped clear each other’s cars and sidewalks, while the kids had snowball fights and built snowmen. As we walked toward our house, the smell of woodsmoke wafting from chimneys around the neighborhood completed this sensual tapestry of hospitality and holiday comfort.

The Magic of Yule

There’d be a fire in our own fireplace in the living room, where stockings were hung, red felt embroidered with angels and our names in block letters, made by my grandmother in the 1960s. There were plates of cookies and bowls of nuts, maybe a Dean Martin Christmas album playing on the stereo. The excitement was palpable, even years after believing in Santa Claus was no longer important. A magical feeling defined Christmas Eve in those days; and in years since, when I’ve been in cities far from where I grew up, it still felt that way, although I found myself much more aware of what a quiet and lonely night it could be, too, with all the shops and restaurants closed. How lonely to be without family or friends on this night, I have often thought, and yet I have been alone on December 24th a number of times. Invariably, I think about Yuletides past, good and bad, like some Dickensian ritual of remembering, coming away with a cautionary reminder to live in the moment and to be ready for change when, inevitably, it arrives. Accepting, if not embracing, change is a lesson many Pagans and witches struggle with, and nature is a powerful teacher in this regard. Seasonal sabbats based in changes of the landscape help us to observe the changes within us—the ebb and flow of energy and emotion, creativity and reflection.

Memories of the Yuletide season have always been significant for me, and it’s always both surprising and comforting to me each year when I encounter them: the magical sight of colorful outdoor lights decorating houses (especially when driving in the countryside at night); the jubilant scent of evergreen trees and boughs indoors; the sudden warmth of a fireplace or wood stove as one comes in from the brisk cold; the taste of traditional treats made by myself or others (I happily make decorated sugar cookies each year from my mother’s excellent recipe); old-fashioned carols played over loudspeakers in store or on the radio. Despite the insistence that Christmas is overly commercialized (and indeed, it is), I still manage to feel a certain magic when this time of year comes around. And I realize the sights and sounds that resonate most are more closely related to a Pagan concept of winter solstice as opposed to the Christian celebration of Christ’s birth.

The Lean Months of Winter

Many of us know that old Pagan festivals were usurped by Christian holidays as a way to lend credibility and authority to the Church in modern European history. The uneducated rural folk observed this time of the coming darkness by celebrating the return of the light, as days started to grow longer after the solstice. In the days of feudalism, the poor worked the farms of landowners for their own subsistence, and had to make sure they put by enough food for the winter. That honoring of light in the darkness was a symbolic embrace of hope, a sign to stay strong and resilient during the coming months of harsh weather. Just as autumnal harvest festivals celebrated the abundance of farms and fields, they also observe hunting (the blood moon, for example) as a way to give thanks for their food sources. We tend to take it for granted these days that food is easily procured at the holidays, but our ancestors were not so lucky, and the Yuletide feasts they enjoyed (often prepared by landowners for their serfs and servants) marked a time just before the lean months of winter. “Eat, drink, and be merry” meant take advantage of abundance while you have it.

Since becoming a practicing witch as a young adult, my celebration of Yuletide has, strangely enough, retained many of the sensory delights I remember from the Christmases of my youth, and it’s been comforting to realize that my upbringing was actually fairly Pagan all along. My dad was an avid outdoorsman. I still decorate the mounted deer’s head, named Percy, that I inherited when he passed away; he once hung it on our porch with lights and ribbons and I (a sensitive teenager) was mortified. No, I proudly hang holly boughs and lights from this old piece of taxidermy, in his honor and also to honor the deer’s life. My father was not one to collect hunting trophies: he mainly hunted for food, so this rare piece, from a deer he hunted when he was fairly young, is one I still treasure. The image of the stag, associated with the Horned God, is one I’ve always honored at this time of year. Images of deer, animal representatives of the woodland horned gods, consorts to our forest goddesses who embody the deep soul and mystery of nature, are for me deeply entwined with Yuletide, and of course I include reindeer, elk and other animals in this magical menagerie. I see deer by the side of the road in late autumn, eating at twilight to fatten themselves for winter. I know some will be hunted, but others will survive and increase their herds. The decline in natural predators in many areas has meant deer overpopulation; in years when wild apple and acorn yields are low and winter is harsh, this can mean starvation. At such times, I go to their local hangouts near me (wooded edges to parks and wooded areas on campus land) to leave them apples, carrots and grain.

My mom was a gardener, cook, and baker, and she had many artistic talents as a musician, painter, and writer. I never thought I’d be a professional gardener or baker, but that is part of how I support myself now and it allows me to remember and honor my mother’s memory, to appreciate the skills and appreciation she taught me, every time I create an outdoor holiday display for a client, or bake extra Christmas cookies or gingerbread for the busy holiday season. Holiday celebrations are often interwoven with memories of family and youth, and the pagan pleasures of Yuletide in my childhood remain part of my observance of the winter solstice. These memories are sensual in nature; indeed, the olfactory centers of the brain are closely linked to our memory function, and so the delightful smells of holiday treats can immediately transport us to memories from years, even decades, earlier. Candy canes, hot chocolate, sugar cookies, spicy gingerbread, eggnog, roast turkey and ham, fruitcake, and in the Italian feasts of my family gatherings, anise-flavored pizzelles, savory antipasto, roast chicken, spicy marinara sauce over meatballs and braciola, and many fish dishes prepared for Christmas Eve.

Whatever our ethnic or cultural backgrounds, the favorite holiday foods consumed in winter, when food fortifies us for cold weather and dark nights, seem to nourish us in a special way. I’ve always been deeply grateful for having such a rich family history in this regard; as an adult, I’ve attended some holiday meals where store-bought desserts, take-out side dishes, and tasteless entrees were served, and I felt real pity for people who did not choose to make something special. As a Pagan, some of the best food I’ve ever eaten has been at Pagan potlucks, where those preparing and sharing the food understood the simple truth that food has a deeply spiritual significance and can also be very magical. Just as our rituals and magical workings can be very simple or elaborate, yet still effective, the foods we prepare for sharing during holidays are all about the intention and love we imbue them with.

Yuletide Rituals

I’ve attended Yuletide rituals that were incredibly varied and all very magical in their own way. One was an all night candlelight vigil to honor the longest night, with people gathered in the home of friends who lived in the country for a quiet night with hot drinks and snacks, leaving their candle lit on an altar if they needed a bit of shut-eye, and then at dawn we bundled up to do some “wassailing” of fruit trees in the orchard. When I lived in Boston, I walked snowy city streets with an amateur “churchless church choir” led by a director who understood that adults who no longer engage in school or church-based choral groups still derive great pleasure from singing traditional carols. We stood in the public library in an acoustically sensitive stairway and gentle hummed “Silent Night” in four part harmony—one of the most powerful holiday musical memories I’ve been part of. I’ve created ritual altars for my coven for this festival full of votive holders of candles, of all shapes, sizes, and colors, festive to look at but also resembling the memorials we erect to the dead—for what season brings home the melancholy feelings of grief and loss more than winter?

Our rituals to observe the winter solstice may also be seen as a way to usher in the new year, and this includes themes of forgiveness, renewal, creativity, and hope. Some contemporary Pagan traditions honor the festival of Samhain as the beginning of the new year, but my own coven celebrates the new year at winter solstice. This makes more sense to me; not only is this the traditional start of the new year as it is marked in most of our secular calendars, but the rebirth of the sun and beginning of the longer, lighter days feels like a fitting way to welcome in a new year.

Some Pagans also refer to Yule as Midwinter in the same way we refer to Midsummer. Some people are confused by this, because, they ask, why would the beginning of the season be referred to as the middle? But these words are based on an older understanding of the word, referring to the true beginning of the season (at least in this hemisphere), when the landscape and weather really look and feel like a reflection of the season. In those days, Samhain was more of a “true” start to the autumnal season than the autumn equinox, for example.

The notion that Pagans and witches choose to view winter as a time for looking inward for reflection, reading, study, crafts and “inner work” that has to do with dreams, journaling, and personal transformation is also a frequent theme discussed by many of my pagan compatriots over the years. Practices do seem to be doing many things differently these days compared to when I first entered the community, with many people who are new to Wicca and Paganism finding their information via social media instead of books. There is far less reading of books, much more watching of videos. Even reading for pleasure has been replaced for many people with binge-watching their favorite TV shows and discussing them on social media. I think these changes may also be reflected in how contemporary practitioners see winter in a magical context—how can we best spend our time in this fallow season, when our thoughts and reflections can turn us inward for self-examination? The ritual we do to mark Yuletide can help us begin our winter work.

The coven I work with (the Order of Ganymede in Boston, established 1968: I joined in 1990) observes our Yuletide ritual as a rite of renewal, but also of letting go. This ritual has a fascinating component: we suspend a holly bough from the ceiling, hanging over a cauldron containing boughs of evergreen with candles nestled into them. Near the end of the rite, people walk under the bough, alone or in twos, as a rite of forgiveness and absolution for the new year, reciting a traditional poem by Scottish poet Charles MacKay. It begins like this:

Ye who have scorned each other,

Or injured friend or brother,

In this fast-fading year;

Ye who, by word or deed,

Have made a kind heart bleed,

Come gather here!

Let sinned against and sinning

Forget their strife’s beginning,

And join in friendship now.

Be links no longer broken,

Be sweet forgiveness spoken

Under the Holly-Bough.

The poem is only four stanzas, and we repeat it as long as necessary, until every coven member has passed under the holly bough, taking our time to embody this spirit of forgiveness and renewal. I have always found this rite to be very healing and beautiful. Below is a ritual for Yule that is based upon this principle of letting go. You may make any changes you like, incorporating MacKay’s poem or other traditional carols, like “The Fairest Maid,” which has a sort of Celtic faery imagery:

Now sing we of the fairest maid,

With gold upon her toe,

And open up the eastern door,

To let the old year go.

For we have brought fresh holly,

All from the grove so near,

To wish you and your company

A joyful healthy year.