(Festival of the Sun) Yule and the Turning Year

We greet the New Year not with clamor, but with flame— the Yule log laid upon the hearth, felled from oak or ash, an offering to the returning sun. We dress the altar in winter’s bounty: mistletoe for mystery, holly for hope, pine cones and nuts for the promise of seed and renewal.

As the sun stands still upon the solstice, we light candles to lure him back— each flame a prayer, each spark a breath. The wheel turns, the light returns, and we, like the land, begin again.