Origins

What calls you to a place? A path? A sacred text? What is the source of that invisible bell tolling a tone only you can hear? We speak of callings. Being called to a profession, a city, a tree. People come to my work more often than not, because I speak within the textured landscape of honeybees. They share a feeling of being called by the bees. I too had a similar call, but it didn’t start with bees. I’m not exactly sure where or when it started, but a I recall a similar bell tolling through my being on a school trip to England at the age of 17. I was part of a high school band visiting and performing in Cornwall. We were on a bus with the usual chaos of a bunch of kids who couldn’t care less about the landscape we were passing through. But I knew. I was aware of just how many sacred sites piled atop one another.

Folklore & HistoryAriella DalySeptember 7, 2023patriarchy, bee animism, folklore Comments

The Twelve Days of Yuletide Revisited

Last winter I wrote a series of twelve posts on Yuletide. Each post honored a theme or tradition associated with the pre-Christian winter holidays in old Europe. I have complied them here in one long post for you to browse through. Enjoy!

Saint Valentine of the Bees

It’s Valentine’s Day. Oh, excuse me, the nymphs of the woods and springs want me to amend that: it’s another Spring Fertility Festival! Yay! What, you say? Spring Fertility? Yes. The bees, myself, and the historical record all agree that that long before the Christianization of this day, the festivities of love and fertility were celebrated on the streets of Rome as the 3 day festival of Lupercalia.

Folklore & HistoryAri DalyFebruary 14, 2020saint Gobnait, Saint Brigit, Saint Valentine, Valentine's Day, Roses, Love, LupercaliaComment

12th Day of Yuletide:

What better way to end the 12 days than with a celebration of Twelfth Night. What exactly is Twelfth Night?

Folklore & History, Twelve days of YuletideAri DalyDecember 31, 2019Hogmanay, twelfthnight, 12daysofchristmasComment

11th Day of Yuletide: Saturnalia

The Christmas season is full of many traditions that have their roots in the rivulets and estuaries of folklore. From flying reindeer to fruit cakes, there is a rich tapestry of customs woven between the old gods and the new. Christmas is simply the newest name for a time period that required merriment. Why? Because we all need to lift our spirits in the heart of winter. Do you think we’re the first generation to experience Seasonal Affective Disorder? Definitely not. When your life literally depends on the sun coming back to warm the land and make crops grow, seasons become awfully important. This time of year was about prophecy, divination, offerings, celebration, song, storytelling, nourishment and giving. And though we may not like to remember it, in our tidy, holy days, this time of year has also always been about getting it on.

Folklore & History, Twelve days of YuletideAri DalyDecember 31, 2019yesiseaidit, 12daysofchristmas, pleasureactivismComment

10th Day of Yuletide: Elves

The mid-winter festivals aren’t just for honouring ancestors and celebrating the light. They are also a time for the fey folk. In pre-Christian Europe, the feast days occurred during key points in the seasonal calendar. The equinoxes and solstices were always considered powerful days of magic. It is on such days that reality is less distinct: ordinary and non-ordinary reality, or what the Celts call “the veil between the worlds” is mutable. The veil becomes thin and fairy folk are often seen.

Folklore & History, Twelve days of YuletideAri DalyDecember 30, 2019gnomes, elves, tomten, 12daysofchristmasComment

9th Day of Yuletide: Mumming

Do you go on costumed capers over the holidays? Because you should. Don’t leave your masks and revelry to Halloween, there is still time to join in with Celtic winter tradition of Mumming. Although, you may need to invite at least one friend to dress as a ghostly horse. Rules are rules.

Similar to wassailing, mumming has had a resurgence in Ireland and Britain. Mummers would typically dress unrecognisably, swap clothes, wear masks and go about the village singing, dancing and performing plays at each house. These revelries often happened within the twelve days of Christmas. Traditionally it was done in silence or “mum”, although singing and rhyme became a major part of the plays as the tradition continued. The word mum means silence. This is where we get the phrase “mum’s the word”. Mumming and wassailing often overlap, but there is a third tradition worth mentioning here as well: The Grey Mare.

Folklore & History, Twelve days of YuletideAri DalyDecember 29, 2019mumming, 12daysofchristmasComment

8th Day of Yuletide: Sing to the Trees

I grew up in a town that was small enough to still have Christmas carolling. I used to love going from house to house singing tunes. We gathered before a house and sang until the owners opened the door. Sometimes they ignored us, but sometimes they would join in. If I had been doing this a few centuries back, perhaps the owners would have offered treats, money or gifts. Or, perhaps we wouldn’t have been singing to homeowners at all; we would have been singing to the trees.

Christmas carolling, in the old sense of going from door to door and singing, has roots in Wassailing. As in: “Here we go a-wassailing among the leaves so green…” Wassail is a drink and a folk tradition celebrated during the twelve nights of Christmas, or in early January. The word comes from Anglo Saxon “vesheil” meaning “be well” or “be whole”. As a drink, it is typically made from a spiced wine/ale or cider and sometimes an egg. In medieval England, where abundant apple orchards grew, and livelihoods depended on a bountiful harvest, folk would go down to the orchards with a large bowl of hot, spiced wassail.

Folklore & History, Twelve days of YuletideAri DalyDecember 28, 2019wassail, 12daysofchristmas, AppleComment

The 7th day of Yuletide: The Christmas Witch

Ever heard of La Befana? She comes from an Italian legend connected to the birth of Jesus. La Befana's name is derived from the Greek word for Epiphany. The Epiphany is the day baby Jesus was revealed as the Son of God. The legend says the Three Magi stopped at La Befana’s home on their way to find the baby Jesus. She is described as an ugly, poor, old woman with a broom (recall the Cailleach of the Celts). The witch receives the three Magi. In some legends they asked her for directions and she points to the star of Bethlehem. In others, they are already following the star and invite her to come along.

Folklore & History, Twelve days of YuletideAri DalyDecember 27, 201912daysofchristmas, witches, witchofchristmas, labefanaComment

6th Day of Yuletide: The Christmas Tree

If you’re following along with these posts, you have probably gathered that most of the Christmas traditions I’m sharing have older roots in Northern and Eastern Europe. There are some Roman influences, but overall, much of our winter celebrations come from the cold, snowy lands where sunlight is in short supply this time of year. The beloved Christmas Tree is no different.

As with most of these traditions, there is no hard and fast origin date or place for the Christmas tree. Decking the halls with boughs of holly and evergreen has been a practice among pre-Christian Europeans for centuries. Often branches of evergreens, symbolising the continuation and ever-renewing force of life on earth, would be placed over windows and doors, or decorating major festivals such as Roman Saturnalia. This Roman festival of wild revelry, celebrated during what is now modern day Christmas, was a festival of joy and merrymaking in honour of the God Saturn.

Folklore & History, Twelve days of YuletideAri DalyDecember 25, 2019christmastree, christmas, 12daysofchristmas, yule, yuletideComment

4th Day of Yuletide Deer Mother

Once upon a time, a great forest blanketed the northern lands. It stretched from Scandinavia to the British Isles, and from Siberia over the land bridge into North America. Moving through that forest were those who knew the silver tracks of the old ways: the deer and their people.

It was always the reindeer that truly captured my childhood imagination: a sleigh of flying deer, spinning their way through the stars to land on my rooftop where I left carrots and cookies? How marvellous! But Santa’s reindeer have a much older origin and so does the elf himself.

Today, this great forest has diminished, and the way of life for its indigenous guardians is threatened. We call this forest of the north the Taiga or the Boreal forest and out of it’s depths comes one of our most beloved winter fairy tales.

Folklore & History, Twelve days of YuletideAri DalyDecember 24, 2019deermother, reindeer, yule, 12daysofchristmasComment

3rd Day of Yuletide: Mistletoe

“The Druids held nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and the tree that bears it, always supposing that tree to be the oak….They call the mistletoe by a name meaning, in their language, the all-healing.” - Pliny

It has not been so very long that we have lived as if our lives did not depend on the crops, the seasons and the forces that move determine them. When dark winter reigned, people looked to that which brings life. They looked to the sun deities of rebirth. They looked to the fertile promise of life held within the female form, honouring traditions like mother’s night. They also looked to that which lasts even in the heart of winter. This is where the tradition of bringing the ever-green into the home to deck the halls and the mantle. The holly, ivy, pine, fir and of course, mistletoe. It only makes sense that this sacred all-healing herb of fertility found its way into our modern traditions, without losing its essence of the promise of life. For what does a kiss under the mistletoe represent at its heart? The promise of love, life, and renewal.

Folklore & History, Feminist Beekeeping, Twelve days of YuletideAri DalyDecember 23, 2019yuletide, twelvedaysofchristmas, mistletoeComment

2nd Day of Yuletide : Yule/Winter Solstice/Midwinte

Today marks the shortest day of the year, followed by the longest night. Back when calendars followed the season and cycles of the stars, the solstices were times of lasting festivals and holy observances. In some places like the Celtic Isles, Winter’s Night was a time when the flame or light of the previous year was burned through the night, to usher in the dawning of the light on the following morning. In this way, the flame of the old year ignites the new year.

In continuation with my 12 days of Yuletide exploration, I give you the Yule Log. All across old Europe, it was customary to fell a tree, usually Oak, Spruce or Pine, and drag it through the village to eventually be placed upon the hearth and burned through Solstice Night and sometimes beyond. The ash from the log was often saved and used in various cultures to bless the crops, aid in fertility, protect against storms, and heal the sick.

Twelve days of Yuletide, Folklore & HistoryAri DalyDecember 21, 2019yuletide, yule, twelvedaysofchristmas, yulelogComment

Mother’s Night and the Twelve Days of Yuletide

For the next 12 days I am going to be doing a series on some of the Old European traditions associated midwinter. We begin with the twelve days themselves.

We all know the popular song, but what are the twelve days of Christmas? If you go looking, you’ll likely be told the 12 days of Christmas begin on Christmas Day and end on January 6th. From the birth of Christ to the coming of the 3 wise men. Twelve days plucked from the people who celebrated the Earth and handed in a neat little package of Christian theology, avoiding old traditions like Mother’s Night.