Asatru Folk Assembly - On Yule w⧸ Gyðja Catie Erickson

00:00:00.000 So today I'm going to be talking to everyone about Yule. I think Yule is probably one of our best known holidays.

00:00:11.000 A large part of that is because of the fact that the term Yule or Yuletide is still broadly used when describing the Christmas season.

00:00:24.000 Also, the fact that so many of our pre-Christian traditions have been sort of adapted into Christian traditions makes it a very recognizable holiday for most people. 0.70

00:00:38.520 So I know a lot of people tend to focus on the negative aspect of the Christians came and stole all of our stuff.

00:00:45.840 but instead of thinking of it that way, I really believe that we should instead think of it in 0.95

00:00:52.820 terms of, well, I'm glad that they stole our stuff because now we can take it back.

00:01:00.100 Because focusing on the negative aspect of it kind of takes away from the fact that Yule is

00:01:05.820 supposed to be a very joyful time of year. So Yuletide is the 12 days of Yule. It usually starts

00:01:14.600 on or right before the winter solstice. I have to get my calendar. Sorry, because I don't

00:01:23.200 remember days. So we usually have the first night of Yule is on the 20th or Mother's Night.

00:01:31.480 And the solstice is usually on the 21st or the 22nd.

00:01:36.180 um it really it just you know it depends but in order to have 12 days of yule you can't have the

00:01:44.500 first night of yule start on the solstice every single time or you don't have enough days you

00:01:49.300 know what i mean um but it usually starts on the 20th or it it does start on the 20th with mother's

00:01:56.500 night or or Frigga's night depending um it's kind of both Frigga being the all mother um she is

00:02:08.980 one of the de-seer after a fashion and we celebrate our de-seer on mother's night um

00:02:16.580 our de-seer are the ones who are holding

00:02:19.780 the hearth fires steady and ready to keep us all warm and well-fed throughout the season.

00:02:28.840 Yule was, for our ancestors, sort of a mild sigh of relief. We're not quite getting ready to be

00:02:38.140 out of the harshest part of the year, but Yule marks the beginning of the decline of winter.

00:02:44.100 The days start to grow a little bit longer, and as they start to grow longer, they grow warmer, and thus it avalanches forward into spring and summer and growing in easy times.

00:02:56.900 And I say easy only because, you know, if you were in Iceland a thousand years ago, you were probably homebound and getting hungry for something other than the supplies you were able to have last up until this point, you know.

00:03:15.400 but it was the harshest time of the year obviously we don't live a thousand years

00:03:21.400 ago and we have access to easy growing things with the grocery stores and stuff but we still

00:03:26.140 recognize well I guess yuletide too our seasons are a little more mild than they were for our

00:03:38.260 ancestors in Iceland too but it was considered the harshest time of the year it's also all of

00:03:43.120 us can recognize even by the the end of december how grateful we are to know that the days are

00:03:50.320 going to start getting longer again me personally i am a school bus driver and it's really hard

00:03:59.040 being in the bus in the afternoon driving the kids home from school at 3 30 and 4 and having

00:04:05.600 the sun already starting to go down um it's depressing and i can't see very well with the sun

00:04:15.200 shining in my eyes you know i miss the longer days i miss the warmth i miss playing outside

00:04:21.120 and i know my kids do too even though they'll complain every time i tell them it's time to go

00:04:24.880 play outside um but yeah the 12 days of yule are a time of celebration for our folk um because it is

00:04:33.600 like i said before it is the recognition of the beginning of the end of winter

00:04:38.000 and if the winter is coming to an end it means that spring and summer are coming

00:04:44.160 um during yule we can we celebrate the gods we celebrate the wild hunt um it's also a really

00:04:52.400 good time to celebrate the land beat here our ancestors and our family and our friends because

00:04:57.520 it's a time traditionally where we spend a lot of time closed inside with our families sometimes it

00:05:05.760 can be hard spending that much time inside all the time with our families but we should take the

00:05:10.960 time to celebrate how lucky we are that we have our spouses or our roommates or our children or

00:05:18.320 even just our puppies um sorry about that uh thanks navi yeah for some reason the absolute

00:05:30.720 worst part of that game and i if i turn that off as my message i don't hear my phone it has to be

00:05:37.280 navi i'm just i'm conditioned you know um so as i mentioned before a lot of our traditions

00:05:45.040 are pre-christian and have been adapted mistletoe was usually hung toward off evil spirits the Yule

00:05:54.100 log was used to prevent evil or to encourage the Sun to come faster I read somewhere once that it

00:06:03.040 was considered a worthy offering toward to Thor I don't know how accurate that is though I think

00:06:10.240 that's probably more of a modern interpretation

00:06:12.840 than a historical one.

00:06:14.920 Wassailing, I don't know if that's pre-Christian exactly,

00:06:18.160 but it's often associated with Yule time.

00:06:20.920 Wassailing being, you know, caroling, basically.

00:06:27.480 I know that we have Krampus and Krampusnacht.

00:06:31.080 I do not celebrate Krampusnacht,

00:06:33.440 which would be on December 5th

00:06:35.120 for anybody who does celebrate Krampusnacht.

00:06:38.180 but the idea is that Krampus is like this angry old goat man thing um who would travel around

00:06:48.900 on December 5th and if you left your shoes outside for him he would or I think maybe it was Saint

00:06:55.620 Nick would leave you a present if you were good and Krampus would catch you and switch you with

00:06:59.380 the birch rod if you were bad um according to a slightly more modern take um like I said I don't

00:07:07.300 really celebrate it but i know that it's a big deal for a lot of people so and i know people

00:07:12.260 who would say krampus not so they put out they put it they put their shoes outside and if they're

00:07:16.420 good they wake up with uh with a toy in their shoes and if they're bad they might have coal or

00:07:21.700 something in there but since we all know our parents are the ones who are doing that probably

00:07:26.900 you don't ever find coal although i think it would be funny one day um we have a the yule

00:07:34.660 bock is another uh tradition that a lot of people use it's the the goat made out of straw wrapped

00:07:40.260 with the um the the red ribbon um it's beautiful and also also burns really well which is what most

00:07:47.620 people use it for um to represent i you know a goat that you burn sorry um and then the yule log

00:07:58.500 is um is a tradition that we still use very heavily in the afa in fact um some people

00:08:06.660 you make the yule log with the a piece of the yule tree from the year before um

00:08:14.180 obviously that only works if you purchase a living tree every year like we do um but there

00:08:22.820 you know you can get creative with it if you need to but we we cut off the the trunk a piece of the

00:08:28.260 trunk and we store it for the next year and we put it um in the middle of this candle holder thing i

00:08:34.980 have pictures that i'll be showing you guys later and you'll see some people literally carve holes

00:08:40.180 into them and put their candles directly into the yule log and it becomes um the holder for

00:08:46.340 the candles over the course of the 12 uh nights and then on the last night of you will you burn

00:08:51.140 your yule log from the year before um and a lot of people like to save the ashes because you're

00:08:56.500 you're continuing the cycle of the year before,

00:09:01.480 and the ashes can then be used to bless things

00:09:04.100 and to purify things later on down the road.

00:09:11.840 I feel like I had something else to say about Yule,

00:09:14.420 and I'm drawing a blank.

00:09:15.640 So does anybody have any questions as of right now

00:09:17.760 about what Yule is for our folk,

00:09:22.840 I mean, for the Ossich Folk Assembly?

00:09:25.900 I've also known people to, whatchamacallit, oh, known them to, instead of using the part

00:09:40.080 of the Yule tree from the previous year, using part of the Maypole, or maybe part of the

00:09:48.020 pole that I don't even know what the name of it is, but the pole with the bars and the

00:09:52.280 circles that we use for or that you use traditionally for midsummer as well part of

00:09:57.540 those poles the midsummer pole i mean i guess that makes sense um part of those as as the yule lawn

00:10:06.080 that's just a thought yeah i've never heard of that but it's an interesting idea

00:10:12.640 i'd like to hear from them why they do that just for curiosity like what is their reason behind

00:10:19.760 that not that it's bad or wrong or anything like that i'm just like i said just curious

00:10:24.480 um ron i saw you had your hand up first so i'm going to call on you first

00:10:32.480 yeah we've we've done what nick said too before when we

00:10:36.720 um used the midsummer staying is the yule log and we didn't we didn't pull anything

00:10:43.840 anything historical out of that but it just seemed to make sense

00:10:49.760 It seemed to make sense that it was a time of year we did that.

00:10:54.440 But I originally put my hand up for caroling.

00:10:58.880 There's a fair amount of carols out there that you can use, that everybody knows.

00:11:07.960 They might not know all the words, but that don't even mention Christmas.

00:11:12.400 You know, Deck the Halls with Bowser, Holly, Fist of Season, To Be Jolly. 0.82

00:11:17.040 you know don we not don we now a big gay apparel um 0.79

00:11:21.520 dang it how'd that last verse leave me but it you know see the blazing you will be for us

00:11:29.480 it's all you associated terms you got to go back to the older carols though but there are plenty

00:11:35.740 of carols out there that don't even mention um christ or christmas that everybody knows that

00:11:42.140 gives us an element of continuance in a lot of people's minds but also tradition um for the yule

00:11:52.780 absolutely and it's funny because deck the halls was the very first one i thought of because

00:11:57.180 i've been around long enough now that people have done like repeated studies on which songs

00:12:04.140 can we carol to which songs can we just change a word here therefore to carol without it being

00:12:09.180 too christian blah blah blah blah blah and like i said before i'd much rather focus on

00:12:14.780 uh leaving the bad christians out of it and more on the you know the positive us stuff and so

00:12:22.700 having a list of songs that exist already i would really really like to see our folk start utilizing

00:12:29.740 song more often even if it's just like hey let's all sit around a fire and sing song folk songs

00:12:35.340 to each other and wassailing and caroling and all that i think they're important traditions

00:12:41.340 that have existed for a long time and it's kind of sad to see them starting to kind of go away

00:12:48.540 the other part of the presentation i was going to give this evening was about

00:12:52.300 specifically my family's traditions um because they tie into yuletide and um

00:13:00.140 one of the things that was very important to me and to Witten Erikson when we had kids was trying

00:13:09.060 to figure out how to do Yule in a way that allowed them to still participate in some of the more

00:13:17.820 culturally normal aspects of the Yuletide season. So I acknowledge 100 percent my kids are homeschooled

00:13:25.900 we're also true we're already going to be so far outside the norm of what just outside of the norm

00:13:32.200 when it comes to um how they fit into society but culturally there's just some things you can't get

00:13:39.500 away from like you can't really escape from Christmas for one I still say Christmas all the

00:13:44.240 time by accident because I'm almost 40 years old it's really hard to stop using a word that I've

00:13:50.720 used for like most of my lifetime you know and they're gonna have friends

00:13:56.660 outside of our household who open presents on Christmas Day even also true

00:14:03.480 children whose parents celebrate the main gift-giving portion of you on

00:14:09.860 Christmas because that's just what they're comfortable with for me I 0.63

00:14:14.060 I really wanted to make sure that my children had, sorry, I have squirrel brain.

00:14:23.960 My phone went off and so I had to, I really wanted to make sure my kids are firmly rooted

00:14:31.580 in Ossitru, that Ossitru is the only thing they ever want to be, and I want to do that

00:14:37.300 in a positive way.

00:14:38.420 But I also want to make sure, and this is going to kind of sound silly, but when you're

00:14:43.360 new mom you overthink things and i i was a new mom and it seems a little silly to me now but i

00:14:49.520 wanted to make sure that the draw of outside holidays wasn't one of the things that gave my

00:14:56.720 kid a reason to want to not be also true so christmas is a big one right everybody gets

00:15:02.400 presents from santa they get all kinds of stuff blah blah blah blah i didn't want my kids to look

00:15:07.040 at that and be like i wish we did that um but i also really wanted to create a tradition that

00:15:14.080 was accessible to everyone who had little kids um in the ideal world um all of the children

00:15:23.440 in the afa would celebrate you exactly the same way that way every time our children from the afa

00:15:30.400 were together at a national event or wherever they might get together they would all be able

00:15:34.480 to talk about having similar traditions or experiences around holidays um i'm not i'm not

00:15:45.040 gonna say i'm i'm uh i don't begin to think that the traditions my husband and i came up with are

00:15:53.360 going to be the traditions that everybody else uses oh that's my timer sorry i'm baking some

00:16:00.400 pies so i'm gonna talk on my way down the stairs um so i can take it out of the oven

00:16:10.080 i'm gonna reset so when my son was one we didn't really celebrate yule i had no idea what to do

00:16:17.360 for yule i was thinking too hard about it and i didn't want it to just be a normal i just i

00:16:23.520 didn't want it to be christmas repackaged and then at winter nights when you're i was sitting

00:16:28.080 And then I was talking to Catherine, Svahn's wife.

00:16:32.340 And she was explaining to me how you guys do Yule in your house.

00:16:36.120 And then I cornered you, Svahn, because you came and made the mistake of sitting down at the table with us.

00:16:41.100 And I think we spent a good hour and a half sitting there while you explained all of your family's Yule traditions to me.

00:16:52.380 Sorry, that was loud.

00:16:53.920 And I derived the majority of what we do for Yule from what Witten Svan here does with his family.

00:17:07.640 Now, I'm sure Svan will be happy to tell you about his traditions if you ask him.

00:17:15.040 They are, mine are the simplified versions of what Svan did.

00:17:22.240 not that swans are complicated it's just um there's so much behind how spawn put these rituals

00:17:30.800 and these uh traditions together i couldn't even begin to tell you half of it um

00:17:37.920 they're wonderful but i needed a simpler version i'm a simpler person

00:17:44.320 excuse me so i'm going to share my screen if i could figure out how

00:17:48.320 because i put together a very very bad um presentation uh whoops on uh what's it called

00:18:02.520 powerpoint literally it's just words and a few pictures and it's all probably really poorly

00:18:07.640 spelled because i did not go back and uh edit um can everybody see my screen yes ma'am uh we will

00:18:16.220 be able to see it even better if at the bottom there you click on that button i was working on

00:18:22.880 it i was working on it this is the first time i've used powerpoint since i was in high school

00:18:26.720 and that was a very long time ago well this is great i'll also note i have your entire write-up

00:18:31.520 on yule from years past from the runestone and that'll be linked when we actually when i share

00:18:38.140 the video i plan on rewriting that eventually uh it's good yeah but uh anyway so you'll see here i

00:18:47.020 have i have i have this all written on our family calendar for my own sake so i can keep track um

00:18:53.660 one of the things that was really important to me was to make sure to find ways to make the kids

00:18:58.380 interested in yule for all 12 days i know that sounds silly i get burnt out by the end of

00:19:04.860 the 25th so that's six days in right um excuse me um because there's all the decorating and the

00:19:17.020 cooking and the this and that and it gets complicated so it's easy to get burnt out but

00:19:21.820 i needed for me to have a specific thing that we do every day for the over the course of yule to

00:19:28.620 keep them interested um but i i wrote basically basic notes here uh i wrote salt dough twice

00:19:36.140 for mother's night and it's not supposed to be there twice um we do salt dough on nerthus's night

00:19:41.740 instead uh nerthus's day i don't know i just i said night for all of them um i know that

00:19:48.620 swan has a very specific night day schedule um thing uh so you can see here like on mother's

00:19:57.180 night we also honor Frigga and the Desir at the same time on that night we do a specific thing

00:20:05.020 where we start at the center of the house we turn off all of the lights everywhere in the house 0.96

00:20:10.540 and we place an unlit candle in every room and on mother's night after the sun goes down and

00:20:15.660 it's completely dark or as dark as it can be we light a candle in in our kitchen basically

00:20:21.980 at our stove we don't have a fireplace so we treat that as our hearth if you have an actual

00:20:26.300 fireplace with a mantle that you use as your hearth you use that obviously instead that's

00:20:30.940 the center of the house in our house the center of our house is the kitchen right we light that

00:20:36.140 candle and we run around the house from room to room starting at the center and working our way

00:20:41.660 out usually down because we start we have a door in our basement that leads outside

00:20:47.980 and we light each candle in each room basically bringing the light of

00:20:53.820 Frigga and the desir and the hearth into the dark rooms of the house to bring them

00:21:00.540 the warmth of mothers and the warmth of the hearth and the children we usually give them

00:21:07.900 pots and pans and I know that that's sort of a new year's eve tradition to have kids bang pots

00:21:12.620 and pans but I've always done that on mother's night for the last like 20 years so it's just

00:21:20.780 when i do it but we have the cat the kids banging the pots and pans and the idea is they go in and

00:21:26.140 they scare anything that has ill intentions out of the room and we chase them through the house

00:21:32.380 and out the door at the end and after they're chased out of the room we look we we light the

00:21:36.940 candle because they're scared of i don't know scared but the the way i explain it to the kid

00:21:44.780 is they're scared of the uh they're scared of the light um and they're scared of the warmth and the

00:21:51.020 joy that comes from friga and the desir and the the hearth fire um we have soon as night we light

00:21:58.940 a sun wheel um something i also do because uh stephen mcnallan's 12 days of yule is the official

00:22:08.780 12 nights of yule of the afa and it existed um for a long time before i put together my own

00:22:16.380 version of spawns 12 nights of yule we include the 12 nights of yule that uh founder mcnaland

00:22:23.500 made so on mother's night we um we practice industriousness anyways i'm not going to get

00:22:29.100 too much into this because i put together a whole little thing here um so we celebrate the the yule

00:22:36.140 white for us the yule white is a little creature who comes to stay with us for the 12 days of um

00:22:42.620 yule uh if the children have been good he leaves a little gift in the tree with for them every day

00:22:47.820 during yuletide so uh when we go to pick out a tree because we we do do live trees in our house

00:22:55.340 the kids will bring a little offering and when we find the tree we like and we cut it down we

00:23:00.300 leave a little offering where the tree was and ask the yule white to please if he sees fit come

00:23:06.220 home with us and be our yule white for the year and then when we get it home we put the lights in

00:23:13.100 and you can't really see it i circled it this is the only picture i have for some reason but we

00:23:17.500 have this little um wool knitted scarf thing that we have used as a nest every year and we put it

00:23:27.900 in a cozy spot in the tree um and we create a nest for the yule tree to sleep in and then every day

00:23:35.180 and this is usually the week before mother's night every day um up until mother's night the kids

00:23:41.340 leave an offering to the yule white saying we hope you'll be here with us and usually the offerings

00:23:47.660 disappear um and then on the first day of yule which is um uh soon as day the day after mother's

00:23:58.460 night um the yule white may or may not bring the first gift depending on if they he finds the kids

00:24:05.340 um uh offerings worth it um not worth it that's the wrong word we also call santa a yule white

00:24:14.460 we call him like the main yule white that way we can still have santa because santa exists he's one

00:24:21.660 of the yule whites um and for us the yule white is a really easy way to introduce the kids to the

00:24:29.900 concept of the gift cycle um you give him a gift and he may give you a gift back if he's you know

00:24:38.700 it's very simplistic and i recognize that but it's important for the kids

00:24:43.820 for me it was important for my kids to start to understand the idea that if you give gifts

00:24:48.860 or if somebody gives you gifts you should return it may not always be uh tit for tat maybe

00:24:55.820 maybe somebody gives you a dollar and you go sweep their floor for them or something but

00:25:00.300 there's always a return it's a cycle it never if it the cycle ends the relationship ends you know

00:25:08.220 what i mean so we have our yule white and he comes every day um so the day after uh so then we have

00:25:16.380 mother's night i already pretty much explained all uh what we do for uh for um mother's night

00:25:22.300 a minute ago um the pots and the pans and the fire from room to room uh we also honor

00:25:28.460 industriousness usually we watch steven's video and then we sit and we talk about what that means

00:25:35.660 and we light the first candle on our yule log and i explained earlier um our yule log

00:25:41.020 it's a candle holder that we put a piece of our yule log in and then we light candles around it

00:25:46.860 um and every every night we light every candle so on day one we light the candle

00:25:53.100 to Frigga and the DeSeer and then night two we light it to Frigga and the DeSeer and then we

00:25:59.820 light the next candle to Suna so we just every night we have one more candle to light but we

00:26:04.940 always recognize the candle from before um and like I said before this is when we leave our first

00:26:11.820 we leave an offering for the Yule Whiteness the first time where in the morning we'll get something

00:26:17.100 back um on soon as night during the day the kids and i will usually run around and collect stuff

00:26:22.940 to make sun wheels um there's uh if you look at the picture they're actually turned out better

00:26:28.700 than mine even if they were smaller mine is i don't know if i'd call that a wheel but i tried

00:26:34.940 you know i'm just i tried um so i know that a lot of people like to do bloat and burn their sun

00:26:44.380 wheels and stuff usually around noon when the the or the noontime hour when the sun is at peak

00:26:53.580 but we don't really have the schedule for that i work cliff works so we do it when we can it

00:27:00.380 usually ends up being after the sun has gone down but i always say it's more important to do it than

00:27:06.380 to not do it because of timing you know um yeah and on soon as night we celebrate the return of

00:27:15.020 the sun or the returning sun i should say because it is now going to begin to

00:27:23.100 to shine for longer every day um we honor courage by watching steven's videos and

00:27:30.540 discussing and we light our second candle uh nerthus's day i don't i don't necessarily need

00:27:37.500 to go through all of this with you guys if you would like me to not but usually on earth is

00:27:42.220 his day we celebrate the earth and what she's given us because obviously um whether we we

00:27:49.180 live in convenient times but we still need the things that we get from the earth in order to

00:27:54.060 survive um usually we make salt dough ornaments or some other sort of like natural ingredient um

00:28:03.900 decoration uh i like to do dried oranges we've done cranberry garlands i've thought about doing

00:28:09.820 popcorn garlands but i feel like it was little women or or some show like that where they were

00:28:15.420 like they made their fingers bleed trying to poke the needles through the popcorn that was the thing

00:28:20.540 i read or saw somewhere once and never been a big fan and on uh nerthus's day we honor courage um

00:28:29.740 by watching the video and discussing it and we light our third kindle to nerthus

00:28:35.500 monny's night we celebrate the shortening nights um they're no longer going to be

00:28:41.660 as long the sun will will be dominant again soon um we usually do our uh cookie decorating thing

00:28:51.480 i really love doing it even though it's a super big pain in the butt and it's messy

00:28:55.420 but we all sit around and we have a a wide array of sprinkles and frostings and the kids just go

00:29:02.280 crazy and uh cliff can get very into both of them actually because uh my husband is cliff and his

00:29:10.200 dad is Cliff and they're usually both here together getting real fancy with

00:29:14.580 them cookies but we really just enjoy the time being together and decorating

00:29:21.200 things you know we honor generosity by watching the videos and discussing it

00:29:26.640 that's basically true every night sometimes we have really good

00:29:29.640 conversations because Owen is very curious and very into it and we light

00:29:35.920 fourth candle uh on ancestors night now svan svan could explain how he how he does this way better

00:29:45.040 than i could um and like i said we do a much simpler version of it but on ancestors night or

00:29:51.360 on the 24th um we honor our ancestors obviously um we have the yule white travel to the halls of our

00:30:01.280 ancestors and back overnight and when we wake up in the morning on the morning of the ancestors

00:30:06.880 night we find that the yule white has brought us special gifts from our ancestors so each person

00:30:13.440 gets a gift from an ancestor that is a practical gift a wool sweater or a special pair of socks or

00:30:23.360 maybe somebody gets his first pocket knife from an ancestral grandfather but it's usually labeled

00:30:29.840 with the name of an ancestor and then the person who receives the gifts after we open it has to

00:30:36.320 tell a story about the person who gave them the gift because telling stories and saying their

00:30:42.960 names is really one of the best ways we can remember our ancestors and it's the best way

00:30:48.640 to make sure they stay remembered we don't want to forget as much as we possibly can

00:30:55.040 my family personally we don't have a big dinner but we have a tea i make a bunch of like fancy

00:31:01.120 hors d'oeuvres and we have tea and we sit and we eat them and open the presents and tell stories

00:31:08.400 and usually the the yule white gets an extra special offering tonight to thank him because it

00:31:12.960 was a lot of hard work traveling all the way to the halls of the ancestors and bringing those gifts

00:31:16.800 back and we honor hospitality by watching the video and discussing it and we light our fifth

00:31:23.520 candle uh christmas day or tears night um was the night we honor tear for the sacrifices he makes

00:31:34.720 in order to do what he knows is right at his own detriment um today because it's christmas

00:31:42.800 everybody everywhere even people who aren't christian know what christmas is right it's

00:31:48.560 one of the biggest holidays in the country they had christmas stuff out on the shelves before

00:31:53.280 they had halloween stuff out on the shelves this year at my walmart which makes me sick and also

00:31:58.000 makes me absolutely determined i'm not going to buy any of it because ew but i'll probably

00:32:03.280 will end up buying something at some point because we'll need something i don't know

00:32:08.000 some of our lights will be broken or something i don't know um but we it's important for me

00:32:16.160 that my family is involved my mom his dad and his mom too are all very christian they're always going

00:32:22.960 to be christian they don't want to be also true but they also want to be able to share christmas

00:32:29.040 with us because it's a very important holiday to them it's a huge holiday for families and so we

00:32:34.080 just call this family day it's the day we use to honor our living families just like the night

00:32:39.840 before ancestors night we celebrated our ancestors now we celebrate our living family when we do

00:32:47.680 this by coming together we exchange our yuletide gifts with them and they exchange their gifts with

00:32:52.960 us we have our big feast for the year we get together we just enjoy each other's company that

00:33:00.080 way without it being contentious they can celebrate what's important to them as far as

00:33:08.000 the christmas experience with us and we don't miss out on that experience with them also from

00:33:14.160 the perspective of wanting my children to have at least a semi-normal experience as far as the

00:33:22.640 holiday goes they don't have to look at all these other kids who get christmas or presents on that

00:33:27.200 day be like well we didn't get any presents and i know like i said that's it shouldn't be

00:33:32.640 the thing that matters but i overthought this a lot when i was

00:33:37.280 when i was pregnant and i knew i was having kids for the first time so

00:33:41.120 um that was the thing for me i don't know why it just it was

00:33:44.880 but uh we on a moderation tonight by watching

00:33:48.640 steven's videos and discussing it i wrote steven's

00:33:52.240 am i right did i spell it wrong i did i saw i'm so sorry i spelled

00:33:56.000 steven's name wrong i think on every single one i was typing these like

00:33:59.360 super fast earlier today trying to get them ready um we light our next candle so um the next night

00:34:07.040 is the iron harrier night we honor the iron our fallen warriors for their dedication to the fight

00:34:12.480 and for the lives that they did they gave um i we don't really have a particular thing for feast of

00:34:19.920 the iron harrier what's that even right i'm here your night uh just an extra letter anyways sorry

00:34:26.720 um our yule traditions are still evolving um and fleshing out a little bit so we we haven't really

00:34:34.720 got anything for iron harry our night it might also just be a nice night to relax and not having

00:34:40.000 anything on because uh it's been a rush up until this point you know um it's also a really good

00:34:46.560 time to spend time with friends your kindred or ossature folk assembly members sometimes

00:34:52.160 all three um at the same time because they are all the same people um

00:35:00.560 because why not you you spent time with the ancestors you spent time with your living

00:35:05.280 friends now spend time with your or your living family now spend time with your community

00:35:09.520 obviously the day after christmas might be a little hard to finagle though um but it was you

00:35:14.640 know i we have done it before i think um we honor community by watching the videos and discussing it

00:35:22.400 and we light our candle to the interior odin's night uh obviously we oh we honor the the all

00:35:30.080 father odin um our newest tradition that we came up with last year is the book exchange

00:35:35.600 um totally stolen from the scandinavian tradition of giving books um and i i just it seemed like a

00:35:41.920 a good idea to me to have that be on Odin's night I'm not saying that every

00:35:46.320 book you give has to be a scholarly a scholarly book because I think just

00:35:53.500 reading even if you're reading a novel or you know an Owens case of probably

00:35:59.740 some fantasy about people killing each other because he's really into warriors

00:36:03.520 right now the act of reading still improves the brain and that's always a

00:36:08.100 good thing so i think a book exchange is a great idea personally um we honor individuality by

00:36:14.660 watching stephen mcnalen's videos and discussing it and we light our eighth candle ruler's night

00:36:21.860 uh we honor the the wintry hunter uh today is a day to spend time outside um if you're a hunter

00:36:30.180 maybe you go out and you hunt or you practice with target practice or whatever it is that hunters do

00:36:36.340 i am not one i don't know um if you're not a hunter it's a good time to play outside in the

00:36:41.140 cold build a snowman if you have snow if you have snowshoes or you can go skiing do that obviously

00:36:47.380 we're in skiing kind of go together you know but enjoy the cold um it's hard to do sometimes we

00:36:54.100 don't all like to be cold but try to find a way to enjoy it and then enjoy the hot chocolate you

00:36:58.580 might get to drink afterwards um we honor truth by watching steven's videos and discussing it and

00:37:05.380 we light our candle candle to uber then we have thor's night um we celebrate the friend of man

00:37:12.580 instead of cooking um usually we pull out all the or all of the leftovers from the last couple of

00:37:19.300 days and we stick them out at dinner time and we just eat them honestly for lunch too we just eat

00:37:26.260 we pick at them all day there's always stuff there's always leftover cheese and and meat

00:37:30.580 and crackers and all that stuff and the orders and the tea and we play board games um it's just

00:37:39.700 it's a nice way to just hang out and relax and get rid of some of the old food and we'll honor

00:37:45.780 steadfastness by watching steven's videos and discussing them when we light our candle to thor

00:37:51.780 land white day we honor the land whites um i believe that you

00:37:57.460 all of us should build a good rapport with the whites of our land and one of the really good 0.50

00:38:04.000 ways to do that is to spend some time every once in a while going outside and tidying up 0.98

00:38:08.380 so in our case the kids toys always end up everywhere so we go out into the yard and

00:38:13.360 we make sure everything's tidy and put away for real if it hasn't been super snowy and we walk

00:38:18.660 around our property we have about two and a half acres which isn't much but a good chunk of it is

00:38:22.980 um along one of the main roads in our town so we walk around and we just clean up all the trash

00:38:29.620 if you see that's the road up there and then over here there's a creek and a lot of trash

00:38:36.580 kind of flows down um that way too so we walk around the property we just clean up trash 0.98

00:38:42.420 um because it's it's the right thing to do but also it's a good way to honor the land whites 0.97

00:38:49.220 and we try to do that two or three times a year more often if we see stuff while we're out but 0.82

00:38:55.380 two or three times a year we make the concerted effort and land white day during the was one of

00:38:59.700 them and we honor loyalty um by watching the videos and discussing it and we light our candle

00:39:06.180 and finally we have the last night of uh yule frayers night um for me i honor frayer because

00:39:13.780 particularly on this night because he's he represents the coming summer and it's

00:39:21.280 it's a incur we honored him to encourage the swift arrival of the warmth and

00:39:26.380 growing things to watch winter and and and to yeah just to be at the end of it

00:39:36.600 we hold our last big bloat of the season to honor fair and we clicked I usually

00:39:43.160 have a Sunwheel hanging in the house somewhere and that the big log that the

00:39:50.920 Sunwheel is kind of perched on right there is actually the Yule log from the

00:39:55.160 year it was in our candle holder this is a picture from a different year of the

00:40:00.920 all of the candles lit but we take that log and we take the wreath or the Sun

00:40:07.300 that we had in the house and we offer those to the fire on yours uh on fair's behalf um and we

00:40:13.940 honor wisdom by watching steven madeline's videos and discussing it we like the last of our yule

00:40:20.100 uh candles tonight um today is also the last day that the kids received gifts from the yule white

00:40:25.860 um but we do make one last offering because we make a small offering every single night

00:40:30.340 during yule but we make one last offering to him to thank him for visiting us this year

00:40:35.220 and fault for all of his artwork knowing that there will be nothing in the tree the next day

00:40:41.380 the last part for us is new year's day we know new year's day is not actually technically a

00:40:46.580 part of yule but we treat it as our last day of the yuletide celebrations and that's the

00:40:51.780 day where cliff and i give our kids the gifts from us so they have to wait all the way till

00:40:57.140 the very end to receive the last of their gifts and uh for me that big reason for doing that and

00:41:03.460 And like I said, I hate that my brain was here

00:41:06.760 when I was planning all of this stuff up,

00:41:09.900 but if the kids know that they have a couple extra presents

00:41:13.260 at the end of the day,

00:41:14.480 they're not gonna get bored with Yule before it's over.

00:41:20.400 And that was important to me because they learn a lot

00:41:23.760 and it's pious and it's our faith and they learn that.

00:41:28.580 But when they're little,

00:41:29.580 when they're four and six like they are now,

00:41:33.460 the attention is going to be on the presence foremost and they're going to learn the things

00:41:39.140 and know the things without realizing they're learning and knowing them so by the time they're

00:41:43.900 old enough to understand it'll be so ingrained in them that the present part doesn't matter as much

00:41:48.240 anymore that was that was my thought process anyway anyways that is all of my presentation

00:41:54.960 I'm sorry that was so long it didn't seem like it would be so long when I was typing it up

00:41:59.260 but i am done if anybody uh has any questions oh hi nick it was beautiful thank you so much for

00:42:09.680 that i'm just surprised and what a perfect powerpoint it was beautifully done i will uh

00:42:16.480 adjust stephen's name and all of them so that his name is spelled correctly i like i said i

00:42:21.380 sat down i sat down after work today at like five and i decided i was going to do this very

00:42:28.580 last minute which is what i do with everything i'm very last minute um it's just i don't know

00:42:35.860 it occurred to me to do it today at work and so i sat down and i typed the whole thing up in like an

00:42:40.180 hour and i was gonna go back and double check but then cliff told me i had to be on at seven

00:42:44.900 and then i went to check and it was there was nothing on the calendar for seven and then i

00:42:48.500 saw the cancel was meeting and it turns out or cancelled and it turns out i was looking at the

00:42:52.500 wrong meeting and it was all just i got confused and i'm baking on top of it i'm gonna stop talking

00:42:57.380 nick what do you want so uh this is not really important but i see it all the time and i don't

00:43:05.940 think it's from the sect of christianity that i grew up with what's with the paper hats

00:43:14.100 or paper crowns oh so that's not actually anything to do with christianity as far as i know

00:43:20.500 uh when my mom lived in england it was super normal to have poppers and they're basically

00:43:28.100 like these little like toilet paper rolls with um uh with a little bit of like gum powder or

00:43:35.460 some other kind of exploding powder in them and they're decorated and when you you and another

00:43:41.540 person pull the ends and it's supposed to pop open and it usually has like a paper crown and

00:43:47.060 like a little toy or something in it but they're like holiday poppers i don't know what the proper

00:43:52.500 name is but that i don't know if it was big in our country except we can find them pretty easily here

00:44:00.180 so i'm assuming they are but that was always just a really big thing for my mom

00:44:04.500 because she spent a couple years in england and that's what they did there so yeah i knew it was

00:44:09.460 a british thing i think i just always assumed it was like an anglican slash catholic slash

00:44:15.380 not protestant thing no no i i i would venture to say that it really was more commercial than

00:44:21.700 anything because they were selling poppers but you know it's it's not a very uh if y'all like 0.91

00:44:27.940 it i guess then if it's fun i mean it's just a stupid silly little thing but we like it yeah awesome 0.89

Asatru Folk Assembly - December 10, 2024

On Yule w⧸ Gyðja Catie Erickson

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