YULE, the old name (still in provincial popular use) for Christmas. It points to heathen times, and to the annual festival held by the northern nations at the winter sol stice as a part of their system of sun or nature worship. In the Edda, the sun is styled fagrahvel (fair or sinning wheel); and a remnant of his worship, under the image of a lire-wheel, survived in Europe as late at least as 1823. The inhabitants of the village of Konz, on the Moselle, were in the habit, on St. John's eve, of taking a great wheel wrapped in straw to the top of a neighboring eminence, and making it roll down the bill, flaming all the way: if it reached the Moselle before being extinct, a good vintage was anticipated. A similar usage existed at Trier (see Grimm, Deutsche Mythologic, p. 586). The old Norse hvel, hveol, have developed into Icel. Idol, Swcd. and Dan. hjul, Eng. wheel; but from the same root would seem to have sprung old Norse jol, Swed. and Dan. jut, Ang.-Sax. geol, Eng. yule,* applied as the name of the winter solstice, either in reference to the conception of the sun himself as a wheel, or, more probably, to his wheeling or turning back at that time in his path in the heavens. Goth. hveila, Eng.
while, denote time as wheeling or revolving. The general nature, of the festival, and the way in which the observances were overlaid, or transformed and masked by the Chris tian institution, are noticed under the head of CIIRISTMAS. In the greenery with which we still aeck our houses and temples of worship, and in the Christmas trees laden with gifts, we perhaps see a relic of the symbols by which our heathen forefathers signified their faith in the power of the returning sun to clothe the earth again with green, and hang new fruit on the trees; and the furmcty still or lately eaten on Christmas eve or morning in many parts of England (in Scotland, the preparation of oatmeal called swans is used) seems to be a lingering memory of the offerings paid to Hulda or Berchta (q.v.), the divine mother, the northern Ceres, or personification of fruitfulness, to whom they looked for new stores of grain. The burning of the yule-log (or yule-clog) testifies to the use of fire in the worship of the sun (see BELTEIN).