We just stay out in the living part of the house, the living room, kitchen and other rooms we use during the day. Some people might sleep on the couch while others cook treats, tell stories or do crafts. We try not to use electric lights, because it gets in the way of your awareness of the darkness. I feel this helps with two things, one when things are dark you feel physically closer to the other people around, but it also keeps us from being afraid of the dark.
One thing that is the focus of this night is the Yule log, and no it's not a cake, although those are good too. We always keep a piece of our Yule Tree from the year before to burn on Yule night. As the sun goes down we build a fire and put the Yule log on there. we keep the fire going all night and it is a sources of warmth and welcome. I love having the fire going anytime, but on Yule night it is a magical thing to have. Everything is so dark and cold outside, but inside it is warm and everyone is together by the Yule fire.
A big part of the Yule night for me is baking! I tend to give gifts of food to people over the holidays, because I rarely have the time or money to by my many relatives all gifts. Plus, honestly, I think everyone enjoys it more anyways. Yule night is often when I do the baking for these gifts and put them together. It's also nice to give everyone treats throughout the night when each is finished. It kind of keeps everyone going through the long night.
Stories are one that I want to make a bigger part of Yule for my family, but somehow it doesn't happen when there aren't any children around. I will just have to collect stories to tell when I have kids celebrating Yule with us. Stories about Odin and Nordic Yule would be great as well as fey stories.
One that I would tell is myths about what happens on Yule night with the Earth and Sun. For those of you who don't know, it goes that the Sun God dies the day of Yule when the sun goes down and that the Earth Goddess is pregnant with the new Sun God and goes into labor during the night. For me staying up for the night was our way of supporting her through labor, being her midwives and giving to her. She gives birth to the new Sun God and he rises that next morning.
The last thing I would like to share with you is our way of doing stockings. I've always loved stocking, mostly for the aesthetic appeal, but they also played a role in how my families Christmas functioned. My parents often wrapped gifts last minute, in the middle of the night, and because of that the rule was we had to wait until 8am to wake them. We were not allowed to open them, because my parents wanted to watch. So we had our stockings, which generally had some sweets, but always had some fun toys and games in them. One year we had jacks, that was a good year. I think we played with those more than the actually gifts my parents got us.
Anyways, my fondness of stockings goes deep, but I wanted to find a way they fit into our new Yule and had some kind of meaning. I stumbled upon the old Nordic story of stocking and where they came from. Odin on Yule night rides his eight legged horse around visiting peoples houses, not always to give gifts, sometimes to play tricks and other not so nice things. However, some kids/people would hang a sock full of hay on their mantel from his horse to eat during its long night and Odin would be pleased by this and reward these people by fulling the socks with gifts. I plan to tell my kids this story, not so they think Odin is going to fill their stockings with gifts, but to remind them that thinking of others is rewarded. It has a good moral that goes along with Yule and I get to continue the stocking tradition!
This year I planned to make us new stockings by hand, but we had some bad luck and didn't have the money for the supplies. I'll have to save that for next year, or make them after Yule for next year. However, I thought you all might like the patterns I found, because they are really great! These are some Nordic style patterns from Ravelry, and they are knitting patterns. There's whole book of 15 different designs each of them you can add a name into the top if you want. They even have a kitty and doggy stocking patterns which are super cute! These are the ones I plan to do for me and Melody:
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