In the Yule log glow – Part 4

I found a nice second hand book on Christmas Traditions from 1931 at the Guide Dogs for the Blind biggest book sale, and around this Christmas season, thought it might be interesting to share it with my readers. Instead of my regular blog, I'm taking time off and posting some extracts from this here.

In the Yule log glow – Part 4
By William Mauir Ald


To our ancestors of the Latin Church Christmas was the Feast of Lights, so called after a Jewish Festival by that name, whose forms of illumination were early incorporated into the Nativity celebration and made to symbolize the fact that the darkness of the world was past and the true light now shone.

The candle lights on the Christmas tree find their best explanation from this background. Everything about the Christmas fire and lights was considered very sacred. People in old England would not take the ashes out on Christmas Day "for fear of throwing them in our Saviour’s face”!

Many attempts have been made to explain this curious notion. It has been classed with another which held it unlucky to give out fire at the season; because the household spirits might in that way be banished from the home; and they were not to be treated in that manner. Without disputing this, another context of thought and sentiment may be suggested.

The sense that what was once sacrosanct could not cease to be so was very strong with those of other days. Anyone familiar with sacramental history knows how troublesome a thought it was to know what to do with the remainder of holy elements. Almost any method of disposal seemed irreverent. The aversion from throwing out the ashes on Christmas day is probably indicative of a similar misgiving.

But the Christmas fire was also the author of peace and concord. Chambers in his Book of Day: records that if a wayfarer chanced to see the great log being carried into a house he doffed his hat with becoming reverence; because he knew how potent were its powers for good at the Christmas season.

Within the sphere of its genial warmth old wrongs would be forgotten, animosities would disappear, and families alienated through misunderstanding, jealousy and strife would again be united. Under the spell of the burning Yule log friendships were renewed and loves reborn. These beautiful sentiments of Charles Mackay could equally well have been thrown by him around the smiling hearth:

Ye who have scorned each other
Or injured friend or brother,
In this fast-fading year;
Ye who, by word or deed,
Have made a kind heart bleed,
Come gather here.
Let sinned against and sinning,
Forget their strife's beginning;
Be links no longer broken,
Be sweet forgiveness spoken,
Under the holly bough.

Ye who have loved each other,
Sister and friend and brother,
In this fast-fading year:
Mother, and sire, and child,
Young man and maiden mild,
Come gather here;
And let your hearts grow fonder,
As memory shall ponder
Each past unbroken vow.
Old loves and younger wooing,
Are sweet in the renewing,
Under the holly bough.'

Nor were those who had gone from the family circle forgotten. With their voices wanting and their chairs vacant, how could they be? "Would they were with us still," says the old ballad. Though such thoughts belonged more properly to All-Hallows, yet they followed the Christmas fire.

At an early stage in the history of the Yule log the spirits of the departed were believed to be present and actually imminent in the glowing embers of the hearth. Thoughts of the departed are present, if unexpressed, in the ceremonies of the father of Frédéric Mistral.

The glass of wine poured over the wood is clearly a link with the times when such libations were offered to those no longer visibly present in the home, but still there.

Not thus would any now conceive "those whom they have loved and lost awhile"; yet, in the light of a purer faith, still "Mounting on love’s perpetual fire."