Yule

What it is

Yule is an old winter festival of the Germanic peoples, held in the dark weeks around the solstice. When those peoples became Christian, the season was folded into Christmas, and the two are still tangled together, because Yule and its relatives remain the everyday words for Christmas and Christmastide in English and in several languages of northern Europe, among them Swedish and Finnish. A heathen meaning also survives. Groups within modern Germanic paganism, and other new religious movements, keep Yule as a festival that stands on its own, apart from the church's Christmas.

The Yule months

A Gothic calendar in the Codex Ambrosianus, written around 350 CE, is the earliest trace: it names a month before the Yule month, so a Yule month must have followed. Bede, in his reckoning of time from about 726 CE, reports that the heathen English called December and January Giuli, both of them Yule months, and a tenth-century text speaks of the earlier and the latter one. In the north the names were Jólmánuðr and Ýlir. The Icelandic Bókarbót, from about 1220, sets Ýlir between mid-November and mid-December and Jólmánuðr after it into mid-January. In Sweden a moon-based reckoning survived into the early 1900s, with the Yule moon seen at Epiphany.

Feasts and drinking

Eating and drinking together lay at the heart of Yule. In medieval Scandinavia a blót, an offering, was often made during the festival: livestock was killed for it, and the cooked meat was shared out among everyone present, with ale or mead drunk ceremonially. Skaldic poets could use jól, Yule, to mean feast in a phrase for battle, and the sagas are full of Yule-feasts, as at the table of King Halfdanr svarti, where a Sámi visitor made all the food and ale disappear. In the saga of Hákon the Good, the king has to join blót-feasts at Mære and Lade and eat horsemeat, as a king was expected to.

The name

Modern English Yule comes down through Middle English ȝol from Old English ġēol, and behind that stands a Proto-Germanic word whose origin is still unclear. Jacob Grimm's proposal that it is related to wheel, for the sun's turning, has been largely set aside. A better guess links it to Latin jocus, the ancestor of joke, which once meant festivity or entertainment, so the word may first have meant a season of public joy. Its cognates include Gothic jiuleis and Old Norse jól, which give Icelandic and Norwegian jól and Danish and Swedish jul. Finnish joulu came through an older borrowing. Norse compounds gave Yule ale, Yule gift and Yule drinking.

Today and change

Christianisation did not wipe the festival out so much as take it over, and Yule became a second word for Christmas. Some scholars think older heathen roots lie behind later folk customs, such as julebukking, when people go from door to door in disguise, and behind the Wild Hunt of legend. In the present day Yule is kept again as a festival in its own right by Heathens, Wiccans and other modern pagans, and some LaVeyan Satanists observe it too. For them it is a midwinter rite tied to the returning light rather than to the church calendar.

How Yule is kept

In the oldest northern accounts, Yule began on a night called Hǫkunótt, or Midwinter Night, and went on for several days. A blót came first, an offering in which a beast was killed and its flesh cooked, then eaten by everyone gathered. Ale or mead followed, drunk with ceremony, and oaths were sworn. Plays and games probably belonged to the occasion as well. Tales told of the season have trolls and the undead draugar walking into halls and farmhouses. The saga of Hákon the Good shows a king joining blót-feasts at Mære and Lade. Today Heathens and other pagans hold their own Yule rites and gatherings at midwinter.

When and where

The date was never fixed. Procopius, writing in the sixth century, heard of a northern people whose chief festival came twenty days after the sun returned, in mid-January, and scholars have read this as Yule. Andreas Nordberg argues Norse Yule fell on the full moon of the lunar month after the solstice, so anywhere from 5 January to 2 February.

Yule belonged to the Germanic world, and the record of it is strongest in the north. Old Norse sources from Iceland and Norway describe the festival in most detail, and Sweden kept a moon-based reckoning into the early 1900s. The heathen English also kept two Yule months, and today the festival is observed by Heathens and other pagans far beyond those places.

What Yule means

Yule sits at the darkest point of the year, when the sun turns back and the days begin to lengthen. For the peoples who kept it, that turn was worth gathering for: halls and farms filled with food and drink, oaths were sworn, and the stories told at that season brought trolls and the undead among people. Those who keep Yule today hold to the same meaning, a pause in the cold and a marking of the returning light, kept on its own terms rather than as part of Christmas.

Questions people ask about Yule

See also

JulebukkingA Scandinavian Christmas custom where masked visitors go door to door for songs and treats.HyggeA Danish word for unhurried time at home with others, kept with candles and cookingAdventA four-week Christian season of waiting and preparation for Christmas and the Second Coming.Advent calendarA daily countdown to Christmas using doors, images, or small gifts.

Good reading and sources

• Yule on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-05.