In learning about my Celtic heritage, I stumbled upon a fun tradition of something called “The Yule Lads,” 13 trolls that come from December 12-24 to play pranks. Especially popular in Icelandic lore, these trolls are fun tricksters who, when little children leave their shoes on the window sill, leave candies for good children and rotten potatoes for naughty kids.
December 12th: Sheep Cote Clod visits to harass sheep (but his peg leg prevents him from catching many, and he mostly makes noise).
December 13th: Gully Gawk comes from the mountains to hide in gullies, sneaking into barns to steal milk.
December 14th: Stubby comes to scrape out all the food left in your pans.
December 15th: Spoon Licker licks your spoons.
December 16th: Pot-Scraper scrapes out your pots.
December 17th: Bowl-Licker licks out your dirty bowls.
December 18th: Door Slammer comes late at night to slam your doors while you’re sleeping.
December 19th: Skyr Gobbler arrives. Skyr is a special kind of Icelandic yogurt, but he’ll eat any yogurt…he’s not picky.
December 20th: Sausage Snatcher comes to, well, self-explanatory.
December 21st: Window Peeper comes. A terrible name, this is the kindest of the trolls who is just looking for little snacks to steal by peering through your windows.
December 22nd: Doorway Sniffer comes. He has a strange name, but he’s just sniffing out your cakes and muffins to eat with his strong nose.
December 23rd: Meat Hook comes to eat the Christmas roasts you’re prepping for your holiday feast!
December 24th: Candle Stealer. This harkens back to a day when candles were made from fat and were edible. He waits to take children’s candles to eat!
In December the ancient Celts found themselves under the Elder Moon.
Known as Ruish (roo-esh) in Gaelic, the elder tree was known to protect against negative forces, including pests like fruit flies and mosquitos, and so elder was often hung from doorways or in kitchen windows throughout the year. It was also sought out as medicine for so many, and is said to have natural antiviral properties. The elder tree was one you sought when you needed help.
The elder tree is bruised easily, but also regrows quickly, which is why the ancients named this moon at this time of year for this tree. Everything feels fragile right now. But, as the Irish phrase goes, “Every beginning is weak” (bionn gach tosach lag). Fragility allows for birth.
December is about beginnings sprouting from endings. As we head closer and closer to the solstice, the days shorten almost to the point of non-existence (or, at least it feels like that). But the ancients believed that the sun that faded-but-never-abandoned them made a new covenant annually with the earth in these days.
When Christianity began to have an influence and decided to place the celebration of Jesus’ birth in this month at the time of the Yule celebrations, it made so much sense to the Celts that they didn’t bat an eye: a new covenant with the Son/sun was appropriate in these shadow days.
The ancient Celts felt that December was a time for wombing, anyway. The fields were fallow, the family tended to be physically lax but mentally focused. In December they did their “inner-work,” pondering how the shadows of their own being (as Jung would say) helped them live into their full selves.
We’d do well to follow that lead.
And we may find that, at the end of December, we, like the elder tree, find ourselves being birthed differently into a new year after doing the inner work under the Elder Moon.
For the ancient Celts, December was a month where they celebrated light being born from winter’s long shadows.
They believed that, on the solstice, the sun would jump up and retreat back down for just a moment, seemingly staying in roughly the same place, signaling that it would once again keep it’s promise to bless the people with its presence the next year.
Every year they believed the sun was born again.
They’d honor this birth with days and days of celebration, usually around twelve, and they would perform ritual acts of welcome including dancing, drama, music, games of feat, and above all, lighting fires that they thought would help the newly-born, fledgling sun gain strength. The “yule log” was both for heat and for fueling the sun back into its summer glory.
Also, interesting tidbit: “yule” is probably where we get the word “jolly” from in English.
Even after Christianity had overlaid its own festival onto the celebrations of Ireland and Scotland, the pagan roots shone (and shine!) through. The Scandinavian settlements of the area had dyed the yule practices in the proverbial wool of the people.
It’s an odd juxtaposition that happens when the secular and the sacred collide in these early Advent days. So many of us (at least, in America) are rushing to get that tree put up, the most ancient pre-Christian solstice symbol, and haul out the red and green decorations.
Meanwhile, the church is singing a bluer song and calling everything to hush for a bit, like you would when a baby is sleeping nearby.
Both responses to this time of year in this hemisphere are appropriate, of course. The ancient Celts would spend this time cozying up their indoor spaces, knowing they’ll be in the shadow of the fireplace for many hours in the coming months. They’d tie greenery to their door as an air freshener, and they’d make warm clothes, tell stories, and play indoor games. In this way, they’re not unlike all of us in our rush to decorate for the Christmas season.
But they’d do this other thing, too: they’d slow down. Their work would stop for a while, except for those necessary things needed to survive the winter. They’d rest longer, going to bed not long after night fell and waking late with the lazy solstice sun. They’d light candles in the morning and the evening, their new sun stolen from their fireplace outfitted with a huge log that, God willing, would last a good while.
They’d cozy and they’d slow.
The secular world is begging you to cozy at this moment. The sacred world is calling you to slow.
And, honestly, I’m not sure there’s such a thing as “secular” or “sacred.” Holiness pulsates through everything if our heartbeat is in rhythm with the Divine. So perhaps it shouldn’t be so much the “secular is calling you to cozy,” and the “sacred is calling you to slow,” but rather that the tensions pulling and pushing us in this world are felt forcefully in this moment, which is not a surprise.
We’re in a moment of change, evidenced by those last leaves falling to the ground.
Here’s a deep truth that all of these pushes and pulls point to: life begins in the shadows.
I don’t use “darkness” on purpose, by the way. As prophet and poet Nayyirah Waheed wrote in her collection Nejma,
“there is dark and there is anti light these are not the same things”
Language has evolved to the point where we can be careful and choosy with our words (as imperfect as it might be).
Shadows, like that in the Valley of Death that the Psalmist sings of, is a more appropriate description, I think. We’re not talking about a color, we’re talking about an absence of illumination.
All life starts with an absence of illumination.
The Big Bang began with a deep vacuum bereft of light.
The womb which was our first home pulsated with life, but no light.
The seed trying to do what it is meant to do in this moment is buried under the weight of too much earth, and yet it lives.
Life begins in the shadows.
This is why the readings in the church here at the beginning of Advent aren’t of Mary or Joseph or a baby in a manger, but ones of foreboding and nighttime.
The church knows, as does the Earth, as has humanity from ancient days, that life begins in the shadows, so if we’re going to talk about redemption and salvation and resurrection and new life, we have to start here.
There is an 8th Century hymn that often kicks off Advent in many spaces, “Creator of the stars of night.” The Latin version of this text is most beautiful, “Conditor alme siderum…” the chorister sings in simple chant tone.
Sidus, where we get siderum can mean just “stars,” and certainly it does mean that. But in this usage it also means all the cosmic bodies: planets, meteors, stars, galaxies.
The church sings to the creator who filled up the vacuum of space and, like the Mark text, invites us to gaze up at the shadows of space in awe and wonder. In the night times of life we ponder such mysteries. Who hasn’t stayed awake in bed with their mind racing?
The shadows are meant for such pondering, for from such ponderings comes imagination and new life and all sorts of things never before seen, as frightening as those moments can be sometimes.
And, as it is, we’re again plunged into such a night time of life in this Advent season.
Change happens in the shadows. Newness starts in the shadows.
Life starts in the shadows.
So Advent must start in the shadows.
So, Beloved, cozy up and slow a bit. Ponder the mysteries with the ancients.
Tonight as we enter the midway of the month, I’m remembering that in November the ancient Celts found themselves under the Reed Moon.
Each month has a moon, usually named after a tree, corresponding to the attribute that the month brought to the wheel of the year. Now, while reeds are not technically “trees,” November was illumined by the reed moon because reeds, when wound together, created tough blankets that would be used for both floor and roof, for both basket and rope.
They are tough as trees when braided.
Reeds were emblematic of how November was a weaving of worlds, ushered in by Samhain and All Saints, the ancestors and the babies creating a tapestry of existence that was most clearly felt as the shadows lengthened and the hearth blazed. For the ancient Celts life existed far into the past and far into the future, and the cycle of life was always rolling. Reeds reminded them of this: woven together to be one whole, and when wind blew over the open reed they believed they could hear the howling voices of the ancestors calling to them from the other side of the veil.
These, of course, became wind chimes and porch pipes.
The Reed Moon inspires us, with its long night-shine life, to remember those who have gone before, the ache in our bones a reminder of their unseen, but ever-felt, presence.
In these mid-November days, I’m reading about the importance of storytelling in Ireland and Scotland, and how it historically has shaped (and continues to shape) a Celtic worldview.
Stories were seen as so powerful that a storyteller invited into a home was said to bring good luck to the dwelling, and they were often paid well for their stories.
Entertainment. Knowledge. Skill and art. Stories and the tellers of them were seen to impart all of these.
But more than that, storytellers were the “keepers of the people.” They remembered the history and, when they told the story, re-membered those listening into that long thread of history.
It’s a shame that storytelling isn’t practiced much as a profession any longer. It’s one of the things that I love about preaching: it’s a chance to tell a (hopefully) good story.
And also a chance to re-member ourselves to one another around a common tale, if just for a moment.
November is a “hinge time” in the life of the world.
The Celts knew this. As the bonfires they used to celebrate All Hallow’s Eve smoldered, they prepared themselves for the encroaching shadows as the sun turned in early.
They hung their herbs in the house to scent the place and prepare for winter meals, and began to bolt their windows against the wind. They’d unpack the candles they had made from the fat of the Fall slaughter, and would begin to do the hard work of nesting in.
They knew that November marked the hinge between Fall and Winter, between light and shadows, between dying and sleep, and they embraced it the way that you embrace that necessary fallow time we all encounter in our lives.
It’s good to realize that some times in our lives will just be fallow. Embrace the rest. Use the reserves. And remember that this time has a beginning and an ending, like all things in life, with rebirth on the far side.
And it feels like a very large hinge time in these days.
O hushed October morning mild, Thy leaves have ripened to the fall; Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild, Should waste them all. The crows above the forest call; Tomorrow they may form and go. O hushed October morning mild, Begin the hours of this day slow. Make the day seem to us less brief. Hearts not averse to being beguiled, Beguile us in the way you know. Release one leaf at break of day; At noon release another leaf; One from our trees, one far away. Retard the sun with gentle mist; Enchant the land with amethyst. Slow, slow! For the grapes’ sake, if they were all, Whose leaves already are burnt with frost, Whose clustered fruit must else be lost— For the grapes’ sake along the wall.
For the ancient Celts, October was a special month. All hinge points in the wheel of the year were seen as an opening into the next phrase.
January is Winter’s portal into Spring. April is Spring’s portal into Summer. July is Summer’s portal into Autumn, and October is the Autumn portal into Winter.
But within those four portals there was seen to be two great portals: the invitation into the light, and the invitation into the shadows.
April, with it’s growing light as our star decided to hang around longer and longer each day, was an invitation into the light half of the year.
October, with it’s lingering moon, was an invitation into the shadow half of the year, and was known as the “season of frost and firelight.” Indeed: we’ve lit a fire the past few mornings in our own house.
The Celts called the festival at the end of October “Samhain” (pronounced “sow-wen” in Gaelic). It literally means “summer’s end.” This festival was Christianized around the 7th Century as Hallowmas (or All Hallow’s Eve) and, on November 1st, All Hallow’s Day (All Saints’ Day).
That phrase continued to evolve and is now colloquially Halloween.
Rather than some sort of time to celebrate evil or goblins or whatnot, Samhain was actually a time where the Celts explored and ushered in the gifts and mysteries of the shadow-half of the year.
Why do things seem to “go bump” in the night?
Why do we take fire for granted until we can’t see anything anymore?
What does it mean to take seriously the idea that rest and fallowness are necessary for life?
How does family time change when we’re all stuck inside, and what does that mean for us? Could it be possible that, in these intense family times, dead family members join us around the fire (as specters or ghosts)?
Why, in the shadows, are we more fearful and tempted? How do we ward off such tempters? (One solution was the Jack-o-lantern)
The shadow-side of the year, like our own shadow-sides, is not to be feared but, as the Celts did, explored and held and learned from.
Reluctant Xtian 