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In today’s episode, Yule & Winter Solstice, I’m talking about:
- Introduction to Yule and Winter Solstice
- Traditions and Celebrations of Yule
- History and Folklore Surrounding Yule
- How to Celebrate Yule
Overview
Hey magical beings!
In our latest episode of Money & Magic, we dove into the enchanting world of Yule and the Winter Solstice. Chey – WitchyBookkeeper shared captivating insights into the ancient pagan celebrations surrounding this time of year, from the Norse traditions of Yule to the Roman festivities of Saturnalia.
If you’ve ever been curious about the origins of these wintertime celebrations and how they intertwine with modern-day holiday traditions, this episode is a must-listen. Chey unravels the history and folklore of Yule with intriguing stories of the Holly King and Oak King, and delves into the diverse gods and goddesses revered during this magical season.
But the excitement doesn’t stop there. We’ve prepared a free Yule guide, packed with delightful activities, delectable recipes for winter potions, a DIY Yule log tutorial, and a special tarot spread to help you connect with the energies of the season.
Whether you’re already a devout celebrant of Yule or looking to infuse your holiday season with a touch of mysticism, the Money & Magic podcast and our Yule guide has something enchanting for everyone. You can find the guide on our website under the show notes for this episode.
Uncover the mystical side of the holiday season and discover how to infuse your celebrations with ancient wisdom, intention, and magic.
Stay tuned for our next episode, where we will dive back into the world of personal finance and continue guiding you on your journey to manifesting abundance in the coming year.
Remember to subscribe, leave a review, and share Money & Magic with your fellow magic-seekers. Together, let’s cast a spell to help others on their financial and mystical journeys.
Wishing you a joyous Yule and a magical Winter Solstice!
Stand tall, shine bright, and stay grounded.
Blessed be,
The Money & Magic Podcast Team
Transcript
Welcome to money and magic, the podcast that combines the mystical with the practical to help you navigate money in the Muggle world. I’m your host, shy, remote, bookkeeper, and judgment free money coach. I hope this podcast helps you create a harmonious relationship with your finances that empowers you to lead your truly magical life. Let’s get started. Hey, magical human. Welcome back to money and magic. On today’s episode, we are talking about Yule and the winter solstice. Now, it doesn’t matter what you call it or how you celebrate it, cultures have celebrated the return of the sun in December with festivals and feasting and gift giving and debauchery since the beginning of time, long before Christmas was invented.
It was actually an effort to convince more people to join the catholic church, but we’re not going to get into that a whole lot because I could talk for a really long time about that. Either way. The traditions that we practice during this holiday season came from ancient pagan celebrations of either the winter solstice, Saturnalia, or Yule. We’re going to talk about all of those things in today’s episode. Now, I do want to throw a disclaimer out there that there are many beliefs surrounding this time of year, and I am only giving you what I have learned in my perspective as a pagan. So believe what you do and leave what you don’t. Let’s get into it. So a lot of people wonder, what the heck is Yule? Or they’ve heard of Yule, because this time of year, you hear a lot of people say, oh, Yuletide.
And so there’s a lot that goes into Yule. But the basics of it is that it’s a pagan celebration of the winter solstice. That is the bare bones of what the heck is Yule? One thing I learned is that Yule traditions are very similar to those of midwinter and Saturnalia, which are also old pagan celebrations of this time of year. The only difference is really the gods that the practice was dedicated to, and we’ll talk about those a little bit later in the episode. But I thought that was kind of neat. So during Yule, we celebrate the winter solstice, which is the shortest day of the year. Yule marks the point at which the sun begins to come back to us. Since the summer solstice in June, the days have been getting shorter and shorter, and the sun is disappearing more and more.
So when the winter solstice comes, this is a time where the sun is going to start coming back out. Our days are getting longer. And so that is what we celebrate Yule for. Since the winter solstice is the darkest day of the year, it is both a time of reflection and celebrations. It’s kind of like a festival of rebirth. The sun is being reborn as our days get longer. So talking about Yule, it is celebrated largely by the Norse people in northern Europe. And one of their celebrations lasted for twelve days, and they had huge bonfires, they had feasting and drinking, and they would also decorate a Yule tree.
The Yule tree would be decorated this time of year with all different things. They would make little trinkets, hint, hint ornaments that they would hang on the trees outside. They would burn a Yule Log for the twelve days, and that would allow the families to feast and be merry, and that fire carried them through. On the other hand, we had Saturnalia, which was celebrated more by the Romans. That’s how they celebrated the winter solstice. And it was very similar. They did bonfires, feasting and partying. And this was for them to give thanks to the God Saturn, who is the roman God of agriculture.
By the time the winter solstice got here, the last of the planting season had been completed. They were in the midst of enjoying all of the harvest from the year. So this was a good time that they felt to say thank you to that God for giving them all of the bounty that they had. The Saturnalia festival was usually celebrated between, like, the 17th and 24 December, as far as we can kind of tell with some historical records. And even now, Christmas isn’t really a celebration of just one day. We call it the Christmas season. So it kind of goes along with all of these other things that were celebrated for long periods of time. While Christmas is technically on December 25, this is the day that the Saturnalia festival was considered the climax.
They called this brumalia. Just a couple other midwinter celebrations that I like to note is during the winter solstice, the Greeks would celebrate the Greek God Dionysus, and that was the God of wine, and they would celebrate him with feasts and drunkenness. And all of the things that all of the other cultures did, they would celebrate him over twelve days. And it is said that his birthday was on the 25 December. And so this festival for the Greeks was called baconalia, and it was marked by wildness and excess. And like I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, debauchery. The other one was in Finland. They would celebrate the goddess Bewe, which was said to ride on a sleigh made of reindeer bones, and she was pulled by a white reindeer.
So when you think about just these several different pagan celebrations, so many pieces of them make up what we think of as Christmas today if you take out the Jesus aspect. So let’s talk a little bit about the history or the folklore surrounding this time of year. According to as much history as we have access to, Yule was first celebrated as far back as the fifth century, so that is over 1500 years ago. It was originally celebrated by the Germanic pagans as like a midwinter festival. It would help them stave off the dark and cold and prepare for the long winter that they had ahead. We talked about several other of the ancient celebrations, but a couple rituals I found interesting is that the celtic druids would give mistletoe, which is commonly grown on oak trees, and they used it as a blessing to symbolize life during Yule. They also thought that the sun stood still for twelve days during this darkest time of the year. And so they would light their yule logs to keep away evil and welcome in the good fortune that is where the yule log came from.
And then I really like the story of the Holly King and the Oak King. The Holly king and the Oak king are Toyin brothers who both think that they believe they know how to run the kingdom the best. And each year they fight it out. Who’s the best? Who has the best rules? And one day, the Holly King decides that he no longer wants to put up with the Oak King, and he stabs him. This beautiful lady comes in, she whisks the Oak king away, and the holly king is like, oh, my gosh, what have I done? So he spends the next several months sad and cold and pulling away from everyone, worried about his brother. How could he have done this? And then when the winter solstice comes, the beautiful lady shows back up and says, but Holly King, your brother, the Oak King, is not dead. He’s right here.
And that’s when she shows him the sunshine. And that’s where he says, oh, my gosh, I’m so happy. I’ll let you rule for half the year. And I’ll rule for half the year. So from the winter solstice to the summer solstice, the Oak King takes over. He gives us more sunlight every day. He brings life to the plants and brings animals out of hibernation. And then come the summer solstice, he hands it back over to the Holly king, who gets back into the cold in the dark.
So the Oak king helps represent the cycle of growth and the waxing year and the holly king represents the waning year and the cycle of withdrawal. We have to have both of these things within a year. And I think this is super cool to kind of demonstrate how the year works. It also represents the constant struggle between growth and withdrawal, as well as life and death, especially in nature. So I think that is a super cool story and something that a lot of people might not have heard of. If you look up pictures of those two kings, the Holly King very much resembles Santa Claus, and the Oak King very much resembles the green man, which is another pagan God. So I always find that interesting. Like I said, I don’t believe that this is rooted in any ancient folklore just because I couldn’t find any historical references to it.
But I still think it is a really neat story. While many people think of Christmas as the christian holiday and they think of Jesus and his birthday, I think it’s very important to note that there are so many different cultures that celebrate different gods, goddesses and things like that during this time of year. Doing a little bit of research, there are several gods that I personally have heard of that I didn’t even realize were celebrated by different cultures this time of year. I mentioned Dionysus for the Greek, but another one is Demeter, which is also greek. One of the biggest is Odin. Norse mythology. And it’s so funny to me because in a lot of norse legends, Odin bestowed gifts around Yuletide to all of his people, and he normally rode a magical flying horse throughout the sky. And he kind of resembles the modern day Santa Claus as well.
So I think that is super cool. We talked about the God Saturn being celebrated by the Romans, and there are a ton of other gods and goddesses that different cultures celebrate this time of year. So now that you have a little better understanding of what Yule is and some of the history and folklore, you might be wondering, well, how do I celebrate Yule? And the one thing I want to say is a lot of traditional Christmas celebrations are already celebrating Yule, so it’s not going to be that difficult with this podcast episode. I do have a free Yule guide and it lists all different kinds of Yule activities. It also gives you twelve nights of Yule, so you can go through that. And each of those twelve days, it will give you something to do to celebrate. There is also some lovely winter potion recipes, so there’s some mold wine insider and chai tea latte recipes. So there’s a lot of different recipes in there to make as well as you can bake your own yule log, which I think is super neat and it gives you directions for how to do that.
And it has a tarot spread and all different kinds of stuff. And that is completely free. That is on the website under this podcast episode. Show notes one thing I do every year is I make witches balls and it’s pretty much an ornament and you just fill it with whatever goodies you want. I like to use crystal chips and different herbs and I put different intentions into these bulbs. I tend to make one for protection and I have that on our front door and I switch that out every year. And then I also like to make a couple for prosperity and I like to make a couple for friendship and love. And I give those out as gifts.
I give them out throughout the year. And to me it’s a super fun way and it’s pretty cheap for you to celebrate the holiday season regardless of your beliefs. It kind of puts everything into perspective there. So there’s a ton of different ways that you can celebrate. And if you’re looking for ways, definitely download that free Yule guide because it will help you figure out some of the best ways for you to celebrate. So regardless of your personal beliefs, I hope that this gave you a little bit of insight into all of the possibilities of the past. Maybe it helped you look at things a little bit differently, or maybe it’s going to send you down the rabbit hole and you’re going to start researching all of the ways that christians have stolen pagan holidays over the year. Regardless, I hope that whatever you choose this season, my wish is that it brings you joy and surrounds you with love.
Our next episode, we will be getting right back into the money side of things and we are going to work on finishing that abundance agenda so you can plan your magical life for 2024. And that’s a wrap for another spellbinding episode of Money and Magic. I hope you learned something that can help you navigate money in the Muggle world. If you have any questions, topics, or even your own money and magic story that you’d like to share, reach out to me on social media. I’d love to hear from you. And if you have found the show insightful, I’d truly appreciate it. If you could take a moment to subscribe, leave me a review and share money and magic with your friends and family. Think of it like casting a spell to help others on their financial journeys.
As always, stand tall, shine bright, and stay grounded. I’ll see you next time.
Resources and links mentioned in this episode:
- Get your FREE Yule Guide
- Connect with me on Instagram and TikTok
- Learn more about how we can work together by visiting my website
- Check out my Money Alchemy course 101 HERE
More about Money & Magic:
Welcome to Money & Magic, the podcast that combines the mystical with the practical to help you navigate money in the muggle world. Hosted by Chey, the Witchy Bookkeeper, we explore the emotional and spiritual dimensions of money, as well as provide actionable advice on budgeting, investing, and helping you create a harmonious relationship with your finances that empowers you to lead a truly magical life.
Whether you’re seeking financial freedom, looking to overcome money blocks, or simply want to learn how to make your financial dreams a reality, Money & Magic is here to inspire, educate, and empower you on your journey. Join us every other Wednesday and discover that, with the right mindset and a touch of magic, you can turn your financial dreams into reality.
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