Bassen kindly sent me the following and has given me permission to post it for you all to enjoy. I find it fascinating and really appreciate the opportunity to share it; now, to find some oat sheaves!*bg* kat

(Sorry if some of the html coding for correct Norwegian spelling doesn't come through. I copied and pasted from the PM, so am not sure it will show properly.)

Since you mentioned the root meaning of Yule, I thought I'd give you a little info from my neck of the woods. The word for Christmas in Norwegian is "jul" pronounced "yool" more or less the same as Yule, and it's the same word. It was originally the name of the old norse midwinter feast which was celebrated with a "blót" (food orgy, horse meat, blood, beer in large quantities etc) on midwinter eve (January 12). The feast was moved to 25 December by king Haakon the Good. (King of Norway around 950 AD, the first to try to Christianize the Norwegians, having been converted to Christianity as a ward of the court of king Adalstein in England. He was forced to "deconvert" by the various chieftains who forced him to eat horsemeat at a Yule feast. (Christianity wasn't firmly established for another 100 years.)

The anglosaxon word for the midwinter feast was geoh(h)ol or géol which evolved into "Yule". The anglo saxon names for december and january were se ærra geola (before yule) and se æfterra geola (after yule). The germanic roots of the word can possibly be connected to the latin jocus (joke). In that case the word Yule would indicate a feast in the form of a saturnalia. From the germanic root are derived the english "jolly", the french "joli" and the italian "giulivo".

In Norway I'm saddened to see the commercialized version of Halloween being introduced as a new marketing strategy. We do have a strong, and originally pagan, tradition of dressing up, going from house to house demanding "protection money" which however has nothing to do with all hallows eve. This tradition is called "julebukk" which means Yule goat or more precisely Yule billygoat. Some places the leader of the pack often carried the stuffed head of a goat on a pole as a scepter, other places everybody added a tale to their costumes, no matter what they disguised themselves as. This tradition can be connected to the preChristian belief that all the gods, good and evil, were afoot on the night before the Midwinterfeast. The older country traditions around Christmas entail preparation and protection from this "åsgårdsrei" as it was called, the norse gods beings called collectively "åser" or "æser". On the day of Christmas eve, every member of the household would bathe, the house would be washed, then the animals in the barn would be seen to. On leaving the barn a cross would be painted over or on the barn door with tar. Likewise, inside the home, a knife or an axe would be planted in the wood over the door to keep out all supernatural beings. (They can't stand cold steel in Nordic tradition). In our region they would always prepare a bed of loose straw on the floor and sleep there instead of in their beds the night of Christmas Eve.

The period after Yule itself is called "romjul" in Norwegian. Jul lasted traditionally until the 13th day or the 20th day of "jul" as we say, January 6 or 13. Now we call the period between the 25th and january 1st "romjul" This is the period that people tradtionally went "julebukk", a tradition that once was very strong but now is almost gone (disappeared in the last 20-30 years). The parallels to "wassailing" are many and and both wassailing and "julebukk" are probably part of a common Germanic pagan tradition.

One of the pagan symbols that is still very much alive is hanging up sheaves of oats for the birds. These are now produced specifically for Christmas as grain is no longer cut and dried in sheaves (sickle cut and hung to dry). These sheaves were originally either the first or the last cut during the harvest and were prepared and stored specifically for Jul. The sheaf is shoved down on the pointed end of a pole, then raised and fastened to some part of the house. Holly is also used as decoration, this is also originally a pagan tradition, I think. Holly was at least considered holy in Viking times, it stays green during the winter, symbolizing the recurring spring. Also very important in a culture where hell is a land of eternal frost and snow, and the End of the World is the "Fimbulwinter", not fire and so forth. Hope this gives you a slightly different slant on your Yule. I must agree with Naemanson's take, Jul for me is a celebration of the family. But for all of us who live so far north that winter days are short and dark (4 to 5 hours of sunlight for us), Jul is also midwinter, when "sola snur" "the sun turns back" as we say in Norwegian, the older I get, the more I celebrate that.

God Jul!

Bassen