Keep Christ Out of Yule

keep christ out of yule

  • joe

    Ganting people the freedom to celebrate as they see fit. How did this ever get to be an issue?

  • JMR

    ?? This “take God and Christ out of everything” is getting ridiculous! You cant take CHRIST out of CHRISTmas because that is what the holiday is celebrating!! Why do you exchange presents? To celebrate CHRIST’s birthday! What is going on, this is getting out of control! If you don’t believe in CHRIST then don’t celebrate CHRISTMAS and leave the holiday alone to those who do believe!!

    • Sunny Day

      You should have kept Christ out of Saturnalia and we wouldn’t be in this pickle.

      • Chelsi

        Exactly. Christ was not born in December. Do your homework, stop stealing holidays and then you can go find something to complain about.

    • Anthony

      Sorry, Christmas as a Christian event is a very thin overlay on the pre-existing festival. Gift giving came long before “Christmas”. It is part of the underlying feast which includes story telling, food, gathering together and exchanging gifts over the twelve days. Those aspects and many more (trees, burning the Yule log, mistletoe, holly, ivy, the associated colours red and green) that we all enjoy are ALL pre-date the Christian festival of birth. So, let’s get back to the real meaning of the festival shall we?

      • Anthony

        Oops -as a singer, how could I forget singing? Carols… also pre-Christian.

      • http://www.johannesg.com Johannes Gunnar Þorsteinsson

        Wasn’t it 13 days? At least that’s how it is still here in Iceland but “christmas” (Jól/Yule) lasts 13 days over here. Although it might be different between countries that still hold true to these old values as the festival simply lasted as long as the yule log (christmas tree) burned.

        • Anthony

          Interesting. In the UK it’s known as the 12 days of Christmas and I hadn’t heard of it being at all variable but as Iceland is much closer to the Norse origins of the festival (the UK being so mixed), it’s almost certainly us who have dropped a day…. On the other hand I know you guys do like to party hard so I wouldn’t put it beyond possibility that Iceland added one for luck!

        • Anthony

          Just thought… do you start on 24th as the Danes do? We start counting on 25th so that would account for the difference.

          • http://www.johannesg.com Johannes Gunnar Þorsteinsson

            sorry about late reply. It seems there’s no way for me to get notified when someone replies to me. To answer your question. Yes, technically our christmas/yule starts on the 24th at 6 PM which is when we start eating, and right after that we open up the presents. We still call the 25th the first day of christmas. The last day of christmas/yule is on the 6th of January and if I counted correctly, that’s 13 days counted from the 25th. (so in a way, we have 14 days of christmas now a days)

            PS: I somewhere heard that the tradition of starting christmas on the 24th at 6 PM came from judaism. I am still not sure how that happened given the fact that Judaism has pretty much never properly set foot on Icelandic soil as far as I know.

    • http://www.johannesg.com Johannes Gunnar Þorsteinsson

      Just so you know, technically, yule and christmas is not the same thing and originally, Jesus, God and christianity had nothing to do with Yule, although they have mostly merged now a days. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yule

    • Johan

      I’d love to see you come back and comment on the history lesson you just got. Please?

    • Maria

      What a bunch of Scrooges! I’m sick of this “war” on Christmas, Yule, etc. Some celebrate Christmas, some celebrate Yule. Why can’t we just co-exist and just live and let? No one “stole” anything because no one has a copyright on the values of the holidays. At the heart of it all, the seasons embrace the same values: love, light, regeneration, closeness with family. I’m Christian and my daughter is Wicca and yet we still wish each other best wishes on our respective holidays without any problems.

  • Carolyn

    Wow, people not “getting it” but commenting anyway. What a surprise.

    • Carolyn

      I see some have stepped in to clarify why the righteous indignation wasn’t warranted. Thanks all.

  • James

    rofl @JMR

  • http://PaganinParadise Peter Dybing

    I will mix any and all traditions as I see fit Thank You!

  • Mike

    And remember, adjusting for the calendar and other factors Christ was actually born in Spring, not December nor Winter.

    • Custador

      If he existed at all, which has by no means been proven.