Originally Posted by Fiona W (Post 4902788)

Had a crappy day for physical reasons: thanks to my flu shot, I presume, I didn't get the full-blown flu by any means, but I woke up kind of under the weather and with a truly annoying myalgia (muscle pain) in my right thigh. It was almost as if my right quadriceps muscle got the flu, but none of the rest of me did. It lasted about 8 hours and was the cause of much foul language & irritability, but is all gone now, and I feel back to normal. =grin=

Donna and Ubee asked about pagans and Yule traditions, so I will endeavor to explain a bit. Paganism and pagans are very broad terms for people who worship in a revival of the ways (such as we know them) of any of the pre-Christian religions of the world. There are as many types of pagans as there were/are different cultures with religious practices, but most contemporary pagans practice nature-centered religions, and are both animistic and polytheistic. In the US and the UK, pagans are most commonly wiccans or druids, or other folk with nature-centered religions of Western Europe, of which the the Celtic tradition is the strongest. ("Wiccan" is an outsider-friendly term for "witch": wiccans/witches can be both female and male.) The ancient Celts were a highly developed civilization spread across the British Isles and western Europe, especially France. They were encountered and battled by the Romans, who built their famous Roman roads right on top of the Celtic roads that were already there. Then the invadng Christians tried to convert the Celts, or if not, to wipe them out. This led to much animosity and bargaining between Church leaders and the druids, the priest class of the Celts, and ultimately to the infamous witchcraft persecutions over many hundreds of years, which contemporary pagans call The Burning Times. It's our Holocaust and pogroms, if you will.

The Christian church attempted to attract people to Christianity by building Christian holidays right on top of the eight Celtic High Holidays, the most successful of which has been Christmas, built on top of Yule. The Celtic Yule traditions, which date back a very long time before the birth of Christ, included decorating trees, inside and outside, large Yule logs in home fireplaces, feasting, drinking of hot cider and mulled wine, exchange of wrapped gifts, rituals to honor the return of the sun (the beginning of lengthening days after the Winter Solstice), and going from door to door in groups, singing and doing amateur dramatic performances. Contemporary France still has a Yule tradition of serving large rolled cakes in the shape of Yule logs, decorated with brown icing like bark, marzipan mushrooms, etc. But Yule is not the most important High Holiday from a spiritual point of view: that is Samhain (Hallowe'en), with the second most important being Beltaine (May Day).

Bob and I are druids, a religion derived from what we know about the ancient druids. Druidism has many points of similarity with Wicca, although their rituals (ceremonies on High Holidays & other important occasions) are different. We have a few personal Yule traditions which originated in the druid grove (witches gather in covens, druids gather in groves) we were in from 1991 to 2009. (Bob was the senior druid, the leader of the grove, for nine of those years.) We call our Yule tradition "the longest night's vigil." It starts with a ritual & a party, of course, starting at sundown on the Winter Solstice, with food & drink & presents. Actual druid groves gather in circles in wooded areas for formal high holiday rituals to honor the gods & goddesses of the season. I already mentioned the Yule log cakes, and there are other traditional Yule foods, Ubee, one of which is oatcakes, but I'm not a cook or a foodie, so I'm not up on that aspect of the holiday. As it gets later in the evening, we gather around the roaring fire, socialize, tell stories, and basically hold a vigil, by staying up all night (as much as humanly possible). When it's just starting to get light, we bundle up and go outside, and watch the sunrise, cheering and waving and doing whatever else comes to mind to greet the return of the sun and the beginning of lengthening days.

Since our senior druid (after Bob) died of metastatic breast cancer in 2009, our grove has scattered to the winds, so for the time being, it's just Bob & me at our Yule celebration. We sometimes attend rituals and "revels" (the feast/party after a ritual) with a grove in Baltimore, but mostly for Samhain (Hallowe'en), not for a lesser holiday like Yule.

I know my attempt at a summary of these very large topics probably raises more questions than it answers, but there's tons of info on the Web, if you google things like Yule, wicca, druidism, and ancient Celts.