Celtic Christmas Traditions
The winter solace starts on December 21st and is the shortest day in the year. Pagans believed in holding a festival of the sun to encourage its return and bring good fortune and bountiful crop. Accompanying this were a number of traditions still practiced today over the festive season.
1. The yule log is reminiscent of the time when an oak log was burnt for 12 hours using the remnants of the previous years' to light it. Once it had been burnt, the log was decorated and its ashes were spread on the fields to encourage a good harvest.
2. Decorating your house with holly and ivy is a druidic tradition. These evergreens with their blood red berries were a sign of fertility and rebirth. It was placed around doors and windows to capture evil spirits before they entered the house.
3. Mistletoe grows in the boughs of the oak tree. Druids would cut it down with a golden sickle making sure that it did not touch the ground. Meeting beneath a sprig of mistletoe was considered fortunate and a sign of goodwill.
4. The countdown to the celebrations was marked with an evergreen holly wreath or a Celtic rope knot to hold 4-5 candles. One was lit each week in the lead up to Christmas. Traditionally there were 24 candles, the last of which was lit on the winter solace, bringing most light at the time when the world outside is at its darkest.
5. Christmas cake, Christmas pudding/ plum pudding or figgy pudding contain a rich mix of dried fruit, nuts and brandy. You start making them at the end of harvest and leave them to mature in time for Christmas.
6. Catching the Wren is traditionally an Irish feast celebrated on St Stephen's Day, December 26th, where participants would try to catch a wren, bringing them good luck. Now it is considered more as a time for going door to door, carol singing and passing around the hat.
7. Hogmanay, the Scottish four day festival of the New Year, is when the streets come alive with singing, dancing and partying.
8. In Scotland, at the stroke of midnight, neighbors would partake in "First Footing" and visit each other with a small gift, fruit cake or shortbread in return for a wee dram of whiskey. In other parts, it is lucky for the first person to enter the house on New Years Day to bring a piece of coal as good luck for the coming year.
9. January 6th is the day to celebrate Little Christmas. Traditionally women have the day off housework and the Christmas decorations are taken down. It is considered bad luck to take them down before or leave them up after this date.
"Nadolig Llawn", "Nollaig Shona duit", "Nollaig Chridheil", and Happy Christmas!
