Paganspeak Assignment - Yule

And then there's Yule.

What can one say about Yule?

There's the warm and sappy sentiments that one can find on greeting cards (with which Americans craft their ideological, spiritual, and philosophical beliefs). There's the melodramatic version that most Pagans favor (our Yule predates your Christmas, you bastards! So there!). There is, of course, the Christian Chsritmas (which seems to be embodied by rampant consumerism. Buy! Give! Buy! Give!). Of course, gift giving has become something more akin to compensating for what shit we've been the rest of the year.

I suppose I'm just not sure what Yule means to me. In and of itself, it doesn't mean a thing. Another period of time marked off on a calendar. Sign posts that mark waypoints along our various journies.

But I love this time of year. Maybe that's what I should focus on.

Put side the labels and the words which carry so much baggage. Let's not color this inspection with preconfigured notions or emotions. Instead, let's focus on the only thing that matters this time of year. The emotions that are involved this time of year. Or at least my emotions. I'm not writing a treatise on the subject.

The thing that struck me about the holiday/holy day that we call Yule is the love that abounds. Not in general, but in specific. It's an opportunity for us all to examine our own lives and what that means to our personal and general relationships. Who are we? Who do we love? Who loves us? There is an abounding suffusion of joy and love during this season that just can't be explained by the giving or receiving gifts.

I don't know.

I had hoped to write something interesting and/or profound. I had hoped to tap into some divine brilliance to define not only what the Yule season means to me personally, but what it means to our culture and to humans.

I'm failing miserably.

Perhaps because I no longer have that spark of idealism or romanticism. I'm a cynical fuck, and I've seen far too much of human nature in the past year to have much faith in human beings or our concepts (including Yule).

So I will say this.

A week before Yule, I dropped off my wife, Mara, at home in Kings Mountain, NC. I continued driving our truck to make money for Christmas celebrations with the family. At that point, Yule didn't mean anything to me, much less Christmas. But then I was trapped in South St. Paul, Minnesota. A little over a thousand miles from home. I've been much, much farther out. But never has the loneliness of being on the road been so acute.

I wondered about this.

Sure, I missed my wife, but there was more to it than that. And on my way home, I began to understand. Every mile that brought me closer to home raised my spirits. Not just because I was going home. I felt like I was a part of some greater core, and I had stretched my tether to its limit. I was not just returning to my family, but to that larger core to which I belong.

Somehow that seem to sum it up for me. That's what it's all about. Whereas the thinning of the veil between worlds that occurs during and around Samhain leads us to feel the infinite connections among all things, during Yule we are lead to consider and honor our connections to our origins, and the core from which we came.

That's what I was returning to this year. Home. Core. Family. I was a piece returning to the whole. That was a profound realization for me. I belonged. Yule represents, for me, that belonging. We are all one. Perhaps we honor our smaller personal groups, but we feelt it as a whole. At no other part of the year are we more likely to get along. Why is that?

In the future I will attempt to honor my connections all year long. That is my resolution (in as such that I can make a resolution). Not that I will do so, but that I will try.

What does Yule mean to me?

I have no idea.

But in the coming year, I am certain that I will often smile when thinking of the warmth and belonging of Yule. Just as I am smiling now.