Precisely so; yet, as the Midsummer fires were not kindled for the sake of the warmth they afforded, but as a kind of incantation or a propitiatory sacrifice to the fire-god or the elements generally, if the two had a common origin, we may reasonably expect to find a similar principle or motive at the root of the Christmas observances. At the summer solstice the sun's heat parched the earth and burnt the vegetation. Hence the propitiatory ceremony of the fire worshippers. At the winter solstice his feeble rays were insufficient to the requirements of vegetable existence, and the severe cold added to the privations of both and man and beast. Hence the existence of a corresponding sentiment and corresponding ceremonial observances.
Brand further says: "On the night of this eve our ancestors were wont to light up candles of an uncommon size, called Christmas candles, and lay a log of wood upon the fire, called a yule-clog or Christmas block, to illuminate the house, and, as it were, turn night into day. This custom is, in some measure, still kept up in the north of England."
The early Christians were, and the learned of more modern times are, divided in opinion as to the precise day of the Nativity. The feast of the Passover and that of the Tabernacles have each found powerful advocates. According to St. Chrysostom, the primitive Christians celebrated the Christmas and Epiphany feasts at one and the same time. They were not separated till the council of Nice, in the year 325. Amongst the Armenians, notwithstanding, the two feasts were jointly celebrated till as recently as the thirteenth century. It has been urged by some that, as shepherds were watching their flocks by night in the open air, the birth of Christ could scarcely have occurred in the winter season. But so long as one time was accepted by the universal Church, it appeared to be of little moment which theory was adopted. Sir Isaac Newton, in his "Commentary on the Prophecies of Daniel," accounts for the choice of the 25th December on the ground of its being the winter solstice. He shows, likewise, that other feasts were originally fixed at the cardinal points of the year. "The first calendars having been so arranged by mathematicians at pleasure, without any ground in tradition, the Christians afterwards took up what they found in the calendars."
There can be little doubt that this view of the question is correct, and that many of the curious customs and ceremonies, which were for centuries religiously observed throughout the land, and many of which still linger about the holiday celebrations of remote districts, have an origin older than Christianity itself. The most orthodox and exemplary writers of the middle ages acknowledge this, and contend that the practice of the early Christians of appropriating the festive seasons of their heathen converts was productive of good results.
The testimony of Thomas Warmstry, whose now rare tract, entitled "A Vindication of the Solemnity of the Nativity of Christ," was published in 1648, is strongly in favour of this view. He says: "If it doth appeare that the time of this festival doth comply with the time of the heathen's Saturnalia, this leaves no charge of impiety upon it: for since things are best cured by their contraries, it was both wisdom and piety in the ancient Christians (whose work it was to convert the heathens from such as well as other superstitions and miscarriages) to vindicate such times from the service of the devill, by appointing them to the more solemne and especiall service of God. The blazes are foolish and vain, not countenanced by the church."
The "blazes" here referred to are evidently the yule logs and immense candles, which the worthy pastor denounces with orthodox precision. "Blazes" and "Pandemonium" are yet synonymous terms, in vulgar mouths, in many parts of Lancashire. Some of the ceremonies of this period, however, meet with his somewhat qualified approval. He says: "Christmas Kariles, if they be such as are fit for the time, and of holy and sober composures, and used with Christian sobriety and piety, they are not unlawfull, and may be profitable if they be sung with grace in the heart. New Yeare's gifts, if performed without superstition, may be harmless provocations to Christian love and mutuall testimonies thereof to good purpose, and never the worse because the heathens have had them at the like times."
One important attribute of the Yule log resulted from the fact that each succeeding brand received its kindling fire from the remains of its predecessor; hence its supposed supernatural influences. Herrick sings:—
With the last year's brand
Light the new block, and
For good success in his spending,
On your psaltries play,
That sweet luck may
Come while the log is a teending.
Etymologists have laboured hard to get at the root of the word Yule; some of them, however, with but indifferent success. Brand says:—"I have met with no word of which there are so many and such different etymologies as this of Yule, of which there seems nothing certain but that it means Christmas." Some writers, including the venerable Bede, derive it from hveol, the Anglo-Saxon form of our modern English word wheel, which, as I have already shown, is one of the Aryan types of the sun. Bede, I think, assigns the true meaning to the term when he says it is so named "because of the return of the sun's annual course, after the winter solstice." According to Mr. Davies (Cel. Res. p. 191), the god Bel or Beli was called Hu. Mallet in his "Northern Antiquities," says:—"All Celtic nations have been accustomed to the worship of the sun; either as distinguished from Thor," (? Bel) "or as considered his symbol. It was a custom that everywhere prevailed in ancient times to celebrate a feast at the winter solstice, by which men testified their joy at seeing this great luminary return again to this part of the heavens. This was the greatest solemnity in the year. They called it in many places Yole or Yuul, from the word Hiaul and Houl, which, even at this day, signifies the Sun in the languages of Bass-Britagne and Cornwall."
Brand objects to this etymology, on the ground that it "is giving a Celtic derivation of a Gothic word (two languages extremely different.)" This objection, however, falls to the ground with the discovery of the fact that both languages have a common origin, and that the several races and their superstitions are but separate developments of Aryan blood and Aryan mythology. In modern Welsh gwyl means a festival or holiday, and this may be the true root of the word gule, in the phrase "the gule of August," or Lammas-day. But the Welsh gwyl may itself be derived from the same root as yule, which, to our ears, now only signifies, as Brand says, "Christmas," or the festive season. Heulo, in modern Welsh, means to "shine as the sun." In India the term Huli festival is applied to the ceremonies attendant upon the sun's entering into the spring quarter at the vernal equinox.