Celebrations Of Christmas

Christmas is always an interesting time, culturally and artistically, for me.  I discarded traditional “Christian” Christmas several years ago, and decided to find my real roots for the Christmas Celebration.  My heritage is mostly Germanic, with Celtic and some other northern European extractions thrown in.  So my heritage is Teutonic, and the celebration that my ancestors partook of was called Yule, which was the celebration of the Winter Solstice.  Celebrating the cycles of nature is the only thing that makes sense to me, and I am glad to know that my ancestors felt the same way.

Check out the origin of mistletoe!  I know some gals who would like to get a hold of some of this!  The story I have been told (I’m not sure I have strict documentation of this), is that the week between Yule and the New Year did not exist.  And anything that “happened” during that week did not really happen.  Women drank the mistletoe mead to avoid unwanted pregnancy.  And it worked.

I also find it amusing that Christmas had so very little to do with Jesus, and yet (in southern Europe, at least),  We are left with countless images of the “Christmas scene” Painted mostly during the Renaissance, and commissioned by the Catholic Church.  I love these paintings.  Hopefully during this week, I can figure out how to upstream images onto the website, and I will show you my all-time favorite Christmas painting, which is The Adoration of the Magi, by Giotto de Bondone.

I also discovered something called the “Yule Cat” who would come and eat people who were particularly lazy.  I think I have a Yule Cat in my house.  Arlo keeps biting me lately!

Mistletoe mead + progesterone

http://www2.eos.net/beerwine/history.html

celebration of Yule.  Yule cat.

http://www.simnet.is/gardarj/yule1.htm

Christmas Mythology

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/william_edelen/christmasmythology.html

Introduction of Christmas into Christianity

http://www.abcog.org/xmas.htm

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