Valley Wands

Bah Humbug!

Well, that’s Yule and Christmas out of the way for another year. I always enjoy Yule but find Christmas, with all the excessive commercialism that comes with it, tedious in the extreme. In fact I can’t wait for it to be over. If you want to know how I feel about Christmas in general the great Australian folk musician and poet Kevin ‘Bloody’ Wilson’ summed it up in a number of his songs, just Google the name and search for his lyrics (AVOID IF EASILY OFFENDED). Yule is a fairly simple affair, time spent in the company of friends, good food and drink to share, and plenty of good conversation and laughter. Perfect.

Yule however was the complete opposite, a couple of days spent with good friends (the sort of people I actually enjoy spending time with), and a powerful and enjoyable ritual to mark the winter solstice and I’m a happy bunny. As is our solstice custom we re-enacted the battle between the Oak and Holly kings, we are never quite sure how this is going to work out as the two protagonists rehearse in secret and the rest of the coven are kept in the dark until the event takes place. There is always an element of pantomime and despite the serious undertone it is played for laughs with plenty of slapstick comedy and incredibly hammy acting. There’s nothing wrong with that, laughter is a fine way to raise energy. As tradition demands, the Oak king is victorious and the Holly king retires for a six month break until the summer solstice when the procedure is repeated and the roles change.

Figure 1 Oak and Holly fight for the crown

Figure 2 'Oak' The Victor

Figure 3 'Oak' again

No one is quite sure where the story of the two kings started, probably it is very ancient and almost certainly pre medieval. It’s place in modern Wicca can be traced back to Stewart Farrar who took the references made by Robert Graves in his 1948 essay ‘The White Goddess’ and wove them into his covens’ ritual practice.  It has now become a standard piece of seasonal ritual. Graves, in turn, was probably influenced by Frazers’ ‘The Golden Bough,’ which also refers to The oak and Holly Kings.

Incidentally it was also Graves who was responsible for the concept of the ‘Triple Goddess’ and some of the mythology attached to the Beltane festivities, most notably the ‘Beltane Chase.’ Once again the idea was developed by Farrar and incorporated into his rituals. I often wonder if Graves, and to a lesser extent Kipling, had the foggiest idea that they would be so influential in a developing religion they almost certainly had no idea about. That amuses me! Although this quote about Graves and The White Goddess that I found online suggests that Graves was probably not entirely anti, although I doubt he would understand the way in which modern neo paganism has used his works.

“The book of the same title, his "historical grammar of poetic myth", was published in 1948. It posited the idea that behind Judaism and Christianity lies the presence of a much older European matriarchal deity inspired and represented by the phases of the moon. His thesis stated that a poet needs to be devoted to the creative energies of this goddess, to learn to be a channel through which her unmediated inspiration can flow. Whilst this sounds like a celebration of the irrational, Graves' theories are rooted in a deep knowledge of ancient cultures and the classical world of the Greeks and Romans; some of his ideas have been discredited by academics working subsequently in these fields, but The White Goddess remains a fascinating account of the roots of poetic inspiration. It certainly remained Graves' personal manifesto for the rest of his long writing life.”

Something else that amuses me is the interminable argument between Christians and pagans about the origins of Christmas. We celebrate Yule on the 21st of December, just a couple of days before Christmas. We are not alone in this, many cultures celebrate the solstice as a prominent date in their calendar, and we know from the alignment of numerous ancient monuments that the winter solstice was important. So did the emergent Christian church decide that the mid winter celebrations were a convenient platform on which to superimpose their own festival? In my opinion it seems more than likely. Yes, I know Christianity has its roots in the Middle East where it seems that the winter solstice wasn’t particularly significant, it is certainly not considered all that important in the Jewish faith out of which Christianity grew. However, Christianity was born at the height of the Roman empire and the Romans did have a mid winter celebration, ‘Saturnalia.’ I’m unsure as to when Christmas was first celebrated, but it seems reasonable to me that if Constantine wanted to reinforce the impact of Christianity on a pagan roman society, then creating a festival that coincided with saturnalia makes perfect sense.

More important as far as I’m concerned is the Christianisation of the native British mid winter solstice festival and the evidence is pretty heavily weighted towards the argument that it was a deliberate ploy to ‘turn’ the early pre Christian natives.

We know that Pope Gregory wrote to Bishop Mellitus advising him to change the use of native temples and festivals for Christian purposes so I see absolutely no reason to suppose that the winter solstice and Christmas were not examples of exactly this. The following link will take you to a translation of the relevant document.

http://www.britannia.com/history/docs/mellitus.html

I don’t understand why some Christians are so reluctant to acknowledge the fact that their religion, just like ours, and just like everyone else’s, borrows heavily from older beliefs and practices. For some reason they seem to think that it devalues the special status that they accord to their faith. Oh well, as they say; ’there’s nowt so queer as folk’

BB For now, Hywel.