The Pagan Festival of Yule
- Dec 15, 2025
- 8 min read
Updated: Dec 29, 2025
In our last post, we dived into the debate about the pagan origins of Christmas. But it’s also illuminating—and fairer to both Christians and pagans—to think about the festivals separately, so this week, we are taking a look at the pagan festival of Yule!
For Northern European pagans, the season of Yule was a time for feasting and merrymaking, vows, ghosts and witches. The power of the spirits was at its height on Yule’s eve. Not only was it a season of darkness in the winters of the cold North, but it is also a dark time historically, as we don’t have a lot of written descriptions of pagan practices in pre-modern times. Dr. Orton investigates…
Written evidence isn’t everything. Oral tradition can be invaluable, as is archaeological evidence, in research about religious history. When we’re looking at the pagan history of Europe, written evidence is particularly hard to find. But can we at least use written sources to start to build a picture of the festival of Yule?
“Yule” and “Christmas” are often used as synonyms and there is a common argument that Christmas is derived from the pagan festival of Yule. Having said this, the two have very different origins. Christmas was originally Mediterranean festival, of which we have written evidence from the at least the fourth century. Yule is actually a season, not just a festival—but this season includes feasting and celebration.
The earliest mention of Yule is from the sixth century in Northern Europe. This is from a calendar of saints’ days from the 500s and it is from a palimpsest (a recycled manuscript) and contains the phrase fruma jiuleis, which means either ‘first part of Yule’ or ‘before Yule’. The Old English Martyrology, a collection of saints’ biographies written in the late ninth century, calls the 25th of December “the first Yule day.” December is called “former Yule” and January is called “after Yule.
Many Pagans today celebrate Yule on the winter solstice. The Julian calendar (named after the emperor Julius Caesar) was the common European calendar until the late sixteenth century and under this calendar, the solstice fell on the 25th December. This was replaced by the Gregorian calendar from 1582, according to which the solstice usually falls on the 21st or 22nd of December.
Bede’s De Temporum Ratione (“The Reckoning of Time,” written around 730) says that the lunar month of giuli corresponds with December and January, and that the English calendar began on the 25th of December.
Bede also mentions the pagan festival of “Modranecht” (‘‘mothers’ night’’), which he says the pagans celebrate on “the 8th kalends of January [25 December], when we celebrate the birth of the Lord. That very night, which we hold so sacred, they used to call by the heathen word Modranecht, that is, ‘‘mother’s night’’, because (we suspect) of the ceremonies they enacted all that night.” Modranecht was the New Year in the English calendar. This was the 25th of December in the Julian calendar). It’s possible that this festival celebrated ancestral goddesses of the Anglo-Saxons.
However, there are good arguments that, historically, Yule-fest was based on the lunar-solar calendar, so the date changes every year. Historian of Religion Andreas Nordberg argues that the pre-Christian Yule feast occurs at the first full moon after the first new moon following the winter solstice, based on his study of pre-Christian Nordic calendars and ritual practices.
Odin, Kingship and Sacrifice
Odin is one of the most important pagan gods to be associated with Yule. According to archaeologist Neil Price, two of Odin’s many names show his association with midwinter: Jólnir and Jauloherra, meaning, “Master of Yule.”
Odin is also associated with kingship: In England, Woden (the English version of Odin) was considered to be an ancestral chieftain from whom the Anglo-Saxon kings were descended, so much so that Bede includes him in his genealogy of Anglo-Saxon kings. This is important because Yule feasts are connected to the king in pagan texts.
In the Heimskringla, a thirteenth century collection of sagas about the Norwegian kings by Snorri Sturluson, we get a description of a ritual banquet: “At this banquet everyone had to take part in the ale-drinking. All kinds of domestic animals were slaughtered there, including horses, and all the blood that came from them was then called hlaut (‘lot’), and what the blood was contained in, hlaut-bowls, and hlaut-twigs, these were fashioned like holy water sprinklers; with these the altars were to be reddened all over, and also the walls of the temple outside and inside and the people also were sprinkled, while the meat was to be cooked for a feast. There would be fires down the middle of the floor in the temple with cauldrons over them.”
We also hear about the toasts that were made, which link Odin, other gods and the King: “First would be Óðinn’s toast—that was drunk to victory and to the power of the king—and then Njǫrðr’s [the Norse god of the sea, wind, and wealth] toast and Freyr’s toast for prosperity and peace. Then after that it was common for many people to drink the bragafull (“chieftain’s toast”). People also drank toasts to their kinsmen, those who had been buried in mounds, and these were called minni (‘memorial toasts’).”
In the same collection, the Saga of Hákon the Good tells the story of Norwegian King Hákon who converted to Christianity in England. When he went back to Norway, he tried to convert his people, even though the “country was all heathen and there was a great deal of pagan worship.” Hákon “made it law that observance of Yule should begin at the same time as Christian people observed Christmas, and then everyone was to have a measure of ale, or else pay a fine, and keep holiday as long as the ale lasted. But previously observance of Yule began on midwinter night and continued for three nights.” Some of Hákon’s friends “out of friendship to him, allowed themselves to be baptized, and some laid aside sacrifices” and Hákon had several churches consecrated.
Sacrifice continued to be important, however, because at another sacrificial feast, Hákon, who had previously confused people by making the sign of the cross over the horn at the first toast, refused to eat horseflesh and “was on the point of being attacked.”
At the next Yule feast, eight Norwegian chiefs resolved to root out Christianity and to oblige the king to offer sacrifice to the gods. Priests were killed and churches burnt and the king was told that he should offer sacrifice under threat of violence. Hákon was made to eat horse-liver. Scholars think that this shows the importance of both horse sacrifice to the festival of Yule and of the King’s involvement in it.
Toasts, Oaths and the Sacred Boar
Three important elements of the pagan festival of Yule were toasts, oaths and the sacred boar. There is evidence of this in Norse literature. The Helgakviða Hjörvarðssonar (the poem of Helgi Hjorvarth’s son in the Poetic Edda, a collection of Old Norse poems largely from the 900s) describes Yule-eve, on which “the great vows were taken; the sacred boar was brought in, the men laid their hands thereon, and took their vows at the king’s toast.”
The Haraldskvæði (also called “Hrafnsmál” traditionally dated c. 900) is a fragmented skaldic (Old Norse-Icelandic verse form) poem about part of a dialogue between a valkyrie (a female warrior who serves the god Odin) and a raven: “The courageous leader wants to toast the Yuletide out at sea, if he alone has his way, and practise the sport of Freyr.”
The sacred boar was an important part of the Yule festival. It was consecrated to Freyr, the Norse god of fertility, prosperity, peace, sunshine, and good harvests.
Freyr rode on a boar called Gullinbursti. In the Prose Edda (a thirteenth century collection of Norse mythology associated with Icelandic historian and poet Snorri Sturluson), the Gylfaginning says that “Freyr drove in his chariot with the boar called Gold-Mane, or Fearful-Tusk.” In the same collection, the Skáldskaparmál says that Freyr’s boar “could run through air and water better than any horse, and it could never become so dark with night or gloom of the Murky Regions that there should not be sufficient light where he went, such was the glow from its mane and bristles.”
One of the few vestiges of the sacred boar of Yule today can be found at The Queen’s College at the University of Oxford. The Queen's College performs the Boar’s Head Carol at the Boar’s Head Ceremony every year, a week before Christmas. The ceremony is inspired by pagan custom and commemorates the killing of a boar by a student, who is said to have shoved a volume of Aristotle down the boar’s throat. The boar found it too hard to digest and died, saying “Græcum est” (“it is Greek”).
The Spirits of Yule
Yule is also a season of spirits and the supernatural. Odin was the god of the dead and Yule is a season when people can be closer to the dead.
In Grettir’s Saga, a fourteenth century Icelandic saga, Yule is a time of “the greatest mirth and joyance among men”—but it is also a time of hauntings and supernatural activity. The saga also links Yule to the Christian tradition: “No Christian man is wont to eat meat this day, because that on the morrow is the first day of Yule…wherefore must men first fast today.”
Glam was a dead man who became a restless spirit because he refused to follow Christian customs and committed evil deeds in life. He “lay not quiet” and his supernatural activity was all the worse during Yule: “Glam took to riding the house-roofs at night, so that he went nigh to breaking them in. Now he walked well-nigh night and day. Hardly durst men fare up into the dale, though they had errands enough there. And much scathe the men of the country-side deemed all this.”
Today, Yule’s association with the supernatural can be seen in the English tradition of wassailing, which involves singing, drinking, bonfires and banging pots and pans. The idea is to do this in the orchard, although it could sometimes take place in homes. It also might involve going to the doors of wealthy people, to sing in exchange for alcohol, food or money. During the winter months, this was thought to wake up the trees and ensure a bumper crop—and also to rout out the evil spirits lurking among the fruit trees.
There are lots of suggestions about other pagan Yule traditions that survive at Christmas time today—but many of these are from oral narratives, rather than historical texts. Vernacular narratives themselves are really valuable (click the link to read about my research into vernacular narratives in the Himalayas!), but these pre-modern texts can also help us to make a start in understanding the historic pagan festival of Yule.
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