The Wheel of the Year - Yule and Imbolc
The first of the Sabbats to be tackled is Yule, as the Wheel of the Year tends to hold it as the beginning of the Wiccan Calendar. The nature of Wicca as an initiatory religion obscures most rites, so we shall have to examine the beliefs, time of practice, and what little tradition that is public, commonly those held to by Dianic, Alexandrian, and Eclectic Wiccans. The first point is the date of practice.
Per Wiccan tradition, Yule is celebrated on the Winter Solstice. This is an invention of Gardner. Though there were undoubtedly cultures with practices that took place on the solstice, Yule is not one such tradition. The true dating of Yule is imprecise, given the lack of written records from the Norse people, however, we have determined an approximate date. Snorri Sturluson described a three-day feast beginning on Midwinter Night in “Hákonar saga góða”, not the solstice. Andreas Nordberg proposed that the celebration took place on the full moon of the second Yule month (as Yule also referred to a set of months) as dictated by the Early Germanic Calendar, ranging from the 5th of January to the 2nd of February, further positioning the Midwinter Nights as being January 19th to the 21st. In addition to Sturluson’s dating, Nordberg’s placement falls in line with the great blót (a form of sacrifice or worship) at Lejre as performed by Thietmar of Merseburg.
When it comes to religious beliefs, the Wiccan Sabbat is held as the date when the God (the male counterpart to the Goddess, forming the dualistic aspect of Wicca as a religion) rose from the dead, having died on Samhain. This, again, is an invention of Gardner, or other contemporaries. The term most commonly used for the male essence in Wicca is The Horned God, a term not found in any academic circles outside of the WCH. Yule, when placed in the context of religiosity, has few records, though one does exist. Per the “Saga of Hákon the Good” Yule contained toasts to Odin (for victory and power to the king), Njörðr and Freyr (for good harvests and peace), and lastly to the king himself.
When it comes to traditions many practitioners will decorate their altar with evergreen branches, sprigs of holly, pinecones, and other seasonal flora. Wicca also holds that candles are traditionally important, as are the colors red, green, white, and gold. Along with these are the imagery of the sun, the Yule Log, and other evergreen-based imagery. Many proponents of the religion will also claim that Christmas traditions, such as the Yule Log, decorated evergreen trees, wreaths, and caroling are pre-Christian traditions. This is patently false.
- The tradition of a Christmas Tree is distinctly Christian. Whilst tree worship or veneration was common amongst pre-Christian religions, and their symbolism was common, the means by which they were used is distinctly different, with one of the few Nordic stories being about an oak tree. The modern Christmas Tree is, instead, from Central Europe, not the Scandinavian and Nordic countries. The first records of the Christmas Tree are from Lutheran Christians, with the tradition of lights (initially candles, then replaced by electrical lights) coming from Moravian Christians. Modern scholarship also shows a strong link to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in Genesis, found in mystery plays performed on the 24th of December, which is the commemoration and name day of Adam and Eve in a multitude of countries, with it being decorated with apples and round white wafers, representing Original Sin and Salvation.
- Christmas wreaths are also Lutheran in nature, having then spread to Catholicism and the Moravian Church before diffusing through society. The shape represents the everlasting life in Heaven that Jesus provides.
- The Yule Log is also likely Christian in nature, though there aretentative links to Anglo-Saxon religious practice. There are, however, no Nordic records of winter-based fire festivals
- Caroling is a derivation of congregational Mass singing. There are no links to pre-Christian practices.
As for actualYule practices, we simply don’t know. The sagas that provide any possible idea are all centuries after Christianization and are thus disconnected from those practices. “Helgakviða Hjörvarðssonar” and “Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks” provide accounts of a tradition called heitstrenging, where people place their hands on a pig (called the sonargöltr) and make solemn oaths. “Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks” refers to the pig as being devoted to Freyr and being sacrificed after the oaths.
Ultimately, one can see that there are no true pre-Christian practices used for the Wiccan variation of Yule.
Next on the list is Imbolc. Unlike Yule, Imbolc was a festival traditionally celebrated by the Gaels, an ethno-linguistic group that inhabited modern-day Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man. As such, much like Yule, there are no contemporary sources for the original practices. This does not mean, however, that there are no practices that we have reconstructed, nor that Wiccans participate in.
The Wiccan Sabbat is traditionally celebrated on the 2nd of February, a date that is at odds with Irish Reconstructionist Pagans, as well as the sole recorded date for the traditional time period. Irish Reconstructionist Pagans (along with neo-druidic orders which are a separate rabbit hole) tend to celebrate the festival on the 1st, not the 2nd. As for the record, a 10th-century version of “Tochmarc Emire” refers to Imbolc as occurring “when the ewes are milked at spring’s beginning”, linking it to lambing practices.
The Sabbat variation is also held as being a celebration of beginnings and renewals, often being chosen as the date for initiation or self-dedication, with spring-cleaning being a common activity, along with using light to symbolically banish “old energy”, along with leaving ritual tools in the sunlight to cleanse them. This, of course, has no true link to pre-Christian religion.
As far as the traditional festival is celebrated, we must rely on the practices that survived or are hypothesized. For instance, Brigit’s crosses are traditionally made and hung over doors, windows, and stables to welcome Brigid (as the celebration likely was dedicated to the goddess, in some part) and protection against fire, lightning, illness, and evil spirits, commonly being left until the next celebration of the festival.
There was also the welcoming of Brigid, where one member of the house (traditionally the one fetching the rushes for the crosses) would act in her stead, or as an emissary and request her presence in the house that night, with common traditions involving laying a bed for her and providing a meal and ale. Along a similar line was Brigid’s procession, where a representation of Brigid, a Brídeóg, would be paraded through the settlement, most commonly by small girls and young women. The doll itself was made of rushes or reed, much like the crosses, and adorned with shells, cloth, or flowers. The girls performing the procession (all wearing white clothes with unbound hair to represent purity and innocence) would sing a hymn to Brigid, bringing the Brídeóg from house to house where they would receive food or decorations for the doll. Near the end, the doll would be set in a place of honor as the house feasted, being sung to sleep with lullabies once the meal finished. Once done, the local young men would request admission, make obeisance to the Brídeóg, and then dance and merry-make with the young women and girls.
There was also a weather lore aspect to the festival. One such tradition was watching to see if the badgers and snakes would come up from their winter dens (a possible forerunner tradition to the American Groundhog’s Day) as well as hoping for the day to have bad weather. The Cailleach ( a divine hag in Gaelic traditions) was said to gather her firewood for the rest of winter. If she wished the winter to be longer, she would ensure a sunny day so that she might gather as much firewood as possible. If the day was dour and gloomy, she was asleep, signaling a shorter winter.
There were, of course, other less cohesive traditions, such as visiting holy wells to pray for health, the fairly standard family meal with a degree of pomp that was standard, traditional divination practices, and the like.
But once again, we see a large disconnect between the Sabbat and the traditional customs. Even with just these two sabbats, we can see that there isn’t any actual pre-Christian practice found in the first two Sabbats. We find that the majority of the practices on these Sabbats are modern inventions, attempts to romanticize an unknown past. Not old.