Re: Religious Festivities
| From: | Laurie Gerholz <milo@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, December 24, 1998, 21:34 |
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Nik Taylor wrote:
>
> Laurie Gerholz wrote:
> > Many neo-pagan groups celebrate the winter solstice, which falls around
> > December 20 or 21 in the northern hemisphere. One term for this holiday
> > is "Yule", but I'm sorry I can't remember the language of origin of the
> > term.
>
> English. The term is synonymous with Christmas, as in the carol "sing
> we all the Yuletide carol, fa la la ..."
It is now synonymous. Forgive me as I don't have any resources handy to
back it up, but I think that Yule may be an earlier term for the winter
solstice. After Christmas Day was set to be December 25 (in order to,
from some sources I've heard, to encourage the heathens to stop
celebrating in their older fashion and to start celebrating the
Christian event), then the two terms became conflated.
Laurie
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Laurie Gerholz
milo@winternet.com