 Hello people, I'm Ginny Metherill and I'm a fourth generation rich. Today we're going to look at the biggest festival in the pagan calendar and that is the Winter Solstice. This festival has been celebrated for the whole of humanity and it is one of the great five festivals of the year and so therefore we're going to look at the traditions, the celebrations, the rituals and the rites that you might use to celebrate Yule. Yule is the great feast of the winter solstice. It's when we celebrate the darkest days of the year the winter solstice happens at 327am in the northern hemisphere when the sun is directly above the Tropic of Capricorn which is that line that spins around the bottom third of the world because of course Australia is pointed towards the sun and the northern hemisphere is pointed away from it so we get these darkening days. It seemed to the ancient that the sun stood still for three days and so therefore they celebrated this moment as the darkest death of winter and of course one of the main ways that we celebrate this festival is to bring light to it. It is a festival of light, a fire festival and that's why we have candles burning so the main event in any winter solstice celebration is of course the lighting of the fire and this is seen you know throughout the traditions which I'll go into a bit later. It's a really old festival this, it is as old as humanity itself. If we look at the great Neolithic structures that we have throughout the world most of them are aligned with the winter solstice for example in the UK we've got that wonderful cathedral stonehenge and the winter solstice is when the sun sets directly between the two largest trilithons which are the two largest stones and this can be seen right down the avenue of procession which leads up to stonehenge it is particularly magnificent they uncovered great archaeological evidence of huge feasting that happened which we believe happened at the winter solstice I mean how they know the archaeological evidence that it happened at the winter solstice I've no idea however this has been happening for over five six seven ten thousand years. We took the winter solstice to mean the birth of the sun and so therefore in order to encourage this birth we lit a lot of candles to bring forth that life. It is a really special moment in the cycle of the world in the wheel of the year because it is the point where our days start to lengthen and we look through to the coming of the next season. We believe that the name yule is actually taken from the old Norse yule meaning wheel because it represents the wheel of the year and we did have this wheel of the year ever turning taking us through those seasons. It is also at this point that the sun is thought to be born and in the depths of darkness will come the light and that is like all births all births happen from the dark into the light and so customs have developed over the years of how you would celebrate yule it is a very joyful festival and so we bring the most joy that we can you know and one of these ways is to commemorate the greenery that's going to happen in the coming months and that's one of the reasons why you would bring greenery indoors as I have here I've got some ivy and some holly. The holly is particularly good at this time of year it's got particularly fabulous berries on it but I think that's because it means we're going to have a really hard winter so a bit of a worry there is immense amount of folklore surrounding holly and the ivy. The holly king was the king who rains from the summer solstice to the winter solstice he is then defeated by the oak king and the oak king rains from the winter solstice to the summer solstice. This defeat is in order that the earth can be reborn. The berries on holly represented fertility these are the seeds from which the world is going to sprout in the spring and you would bring them in to bring fertility and encourage that growth in your own home so this also meant that we used to kiss underneath holly we always associate kissing underneath the mistletoe it was holly as well because holly brings fertility and it was considered great for future children it is also well known that holly is a protective plant and what it does is protects against malevolent forces and malevolent magic so evergreens really symbolize life especially when the bare bones of nature are currently apparent. If you bring a lot of greenery into your house and you know decorate your fireplaces and your mantelpieces whatever with a lot of greenery it's a sign that the nature spirits know that your house is a safe haven and they can take up residence here if they're escaping from the cold of winter. The wreath formation that we hang on our doors it's also a sign to the nature spirits that they are welcome here and that the fey may come and join you in your home. Yule is also the time that we look to our children it has always been so the romans had uvinalia the pagans had old man winter old man winter would bring presents to the young ones and then the christians have holly innocence day which i just think is rather odd which celebrates where the herod killed all the children in order to stop the rising of the christ child so that's nice isn't it anyway my point is that it is a time to look to the little ones to give them their presents and play with them. I went to lunch not so very long ago and the marvellous bells produces incredible yule log and doesn't it look delicious and it was now a yule log of course now we have turned into a delicious christmas pudding but in the old days it was a great big log and you would bring it into your house and burn it throughout yule. There were several traditions associated with the yule log it had to have been either given to you or taken from your own land in fact you just couldn't buy it that was the main issue you would decorate it with your evergreens and pour cider or wine over it is a sort of veneration of the winter gods and its ashes were very valuable they kept lightning out so it stopped you being struck by lightning if you decorated your houses with ashes it was also a well known witch-preventer so keep those witches away and burn yourself a yule log. The yule log is essentially a Germanic custom here in the west country in the UK we have a slightly more weird i think version we burn faggots of ash wood and this is to i'm not even sure what the custom was and the reasoning why behind it it is quite a big deal though down these parts because we are quite pagan one of my favorite traditions that are associated with the winter solstice is to do with the robin robins have always been harbingers of good luck they are one of the only birds that carols throughout the months of winter and so if you hear a bird singing it's most likely going to be a robin or possibly a ren robins were ever a great bird of the Celks the reason why they got their red breast is they help bring fire to humanity and got their breast burned as a result they also are very special at midwinter so the winter solstice on yule should you see a robin that robin then has the power to grant you a wish and how you get this is to say hello mr robin and ask them what you would like and then thank them for it let me know in the comments if you've ever done this or you do it this year and it comes true in fact yule is just really christmas isn't it if you look at the traditional christmas decorations that we have lighting of the christmas candles purely pagan giving of presents purely pagan and celebrating the darkest months of the winter i mean to be fair christmas is actually one of the youngest of the christian festivals you know it's only been celebrated for the last 1100 years and that's because we were so busy celebrating the winter solstice so lastly the thing that we need to do is to light the yule candle now the yule candle should always be red and i've got one here and this is a winter spiced candle so if i can open it right i've managed to get into it it smells absolutely delicious i can't wait to like this one the yule candle is always red and the red is a colour of protection joy fertility it's got a great strong energy the colour red and so your yule candle should be lit and not blown out accidentally you've got to be very careful about that otherwise it brings bad luck and you must keep it burning throughout the whole of your yule feast it's lovely isn't it smells delicious reminds me of my youth that's how i'm going to celebrate yule with feasting drinking friends party games presents bringing greenery in having a christmas tree putting up a lot of pentagrams on my christmas tree and my next video will show you how i'm going to do that otherwise do let me know in the comments below what your favourite christmas tree decoration is and don't forget my patreon covering meeting for yule when we're going to be giving presents and i'll show you what i mean by that and you'll get them in the most magical way possible is coming up next week do go to patreon.com forward slash ginni meterel to join otherwise please don't get forget to like and subscribe it is by subscribing to my channel but it really enables me to create these videos i will see you in the new year