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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in Yulefrith

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 taking blood without using blood work needles: new age blood sampling

 

“So, are you ready for Christmas?”

Och, other people's holidays. The question comes at me from out of left field: I'm sitting on the table in an exam room, having my blood drawn.

In past years, I might have answered defensively.

“I don't celebrate Christmas!”

“Sorry, not my holiday.”

More recently, my response would likely have been more conciliatory.

“Actually, we're Solstice people.”

“Where I come from, we still call it Yule.”

Maybe I've lost my fire. Maybe I've mellowed with age. This isn't spiritual imperialism, or proselytizing. The nurse is just being friendly in a thoughtless kind of way; her question has no more meaning than “How are you?” or “Cold enough for you?” Yes, there are assumptions going on here, but really, what matter does it make?

Where I come from, we call it the Yule-frith: the peace of Yule. In the old days, it meant that you could safely travel unfriendly territory.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

Housefly - Wikipedia

 

Here's the odd thing this Yule: I've been experiencing a plague of flies.

What's odd is not the flies themselves, but the timing. Usually about a fortnight or so after I move the outdoor plants inside before Samhain, there's a hatching of flies. I presume that the eggs come in with the plants, and the warmth of the house hatches them out. Hence, flies. It always takes me a few days to hunt them all down. With flies, I've learned, you have to be pretty ruthless. If you don't get them before they breed, you'll be sorry.

This autumn there was no hatching of flies. At the time, I remarked the fact, but can't say that I missed them.

On the first day of Yule, though, I saw the first fly. The next day, there were a couple more. The next, a few more.

You know how it is with the Yuledays: things that happen then somehow take on added significance.

Well, the mistletoe is still hanging, and has been since Midwinter's Eve. Technically, this means that the house is under the bough, i.e. in a state of Yulefrith—the peace of Yule—and that nothing should be killed here for the duration.

I'll admit that this gave me pause, but only briefly. Call me impious, but in my house the Yulefrith extends to fellow humans and—if we're pushing it—to fellow mammals. Yes, flies are kin, too—We be of one blood, you and I—but when it comes to frith, I'm sorry: bugs don't count. As I've said before, sometimes you have to be ruthless.

So, I killed them as I saw them. Every day, through all the first Twelve Days of Yule, there were more flies for me to kill, like some sort of weird sacrificial holiday ritual.

Was this a seasonal anomaly, I wonder: the usual autumn hatching, come late? Did I maybe bring them in with the Yule tree, or with the holly from the yard that I cut and brought in a couple of days before Midwinter's Eve?

A buddy of mine once made the observation that omens imply the out-of-place. To know what's unusual, you first have to know what's usual. (He was dating a Druid at the time who, out walking one day, picked up an oak leaf from the ground and said: Oh, it's an omen of great good luck to find an oak leaf! as if this were some nugget of ancient Druidic wisdom.  My friend thought: Um, it's November, and we're in a stand of oak trees. Needless to say, that relationship didn't last long.) In Minnesota, flies in late December are out of place. So what does it mean that I've had an infestation of flies through all the days of Yule?

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Eek!
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    I think of flies as omens of tribulation. Each fly you dealt with per day would mean the number of tribulations you will face eac

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
That Other Holiday

It happens every year. Really, you'd think that by now I'd know better.

I'm driving home from Sunrise brunch on the morning of Midwinter's Day: fully sated, both physically and emotionally. After nearly a Moon's worth of preparation, Yule is finally here.

The night before, from the city's highest hill, we sang down the Sun, and lighted the New Fire during the year's last Sunset.

Then home again, and the little household rituals; after, out to the coven's firelight hearth-side rite. Afterward, the feast, the dances, the carols by the fire.

All night, we keep the Yule-fire burning.

Then up before dawn and out to the bridge from which we've sung up the Sun out of the river valley on Midwinter's Morning every year for nearly 40 years.

And finally, finally, off to brunch: the food, the friendship, the laughing conversation.

So I'm driving homewards, filled with a sense of consummation, looking forward to a restful nap. After a month of work and worry, finally it's time to sit back and enjoy the stillness, the well-earned Yule-frith, the peace of Yule.

Then I notice the cowans scuttling frantically, and inevitably, every year, I find myself thinking: What are all these people still running around for?

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Summer in Winter

After the second Battle of Moy Tura, Macha traveled throughout Ireland. “What news?” they would ask wherever she went, and this is what she told them.

Although there is no evidence that the Kelts of Bronze and Iron Age Ireland observed the winter solstice—unlike their Stone Age predecessors who raised New Grange—Macha's proclamation of peace has long seemed to me a fitting articulation of the hope—and promise—of Yule.

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