Tumblewagon

A Yuletime Celebration

Nathan posted this in Nathan's Log, Personal Posts

We’ve just arrived in San Antonio, TX for a week long stay at the Traveler’s World RV Park. We’ll eventually post some stuff up about this city, which apparently has an amazing riverfront scene and we’ll likely head over to the Alamo and chronolog it all for your amusement, but first I’d like to talk a little bit about the exciting weekend we have before us: Yule!

What is Yule?

The short answer is that Yule is our version of Christmas. Three days with minimal presents, lots of hearty, whole grain family time, Baileys, hot cocoa and whatever types of activities and traditions we can muster up. Last year we made stockings, this year we’ll be celebrating with the seasonal sounds of the singing saw and our latest addition to our new tradition, the pecan pie (thank you Texas for opening our eyes to the greatest pie of all time!)

Why do you do this instead of Christmas?

Okay, so as anyone out there who has children can tell you, eventually a family begins to amass quite a few relatives. The more relatives you have, the harder it is to appease everyone and the more traveling around you have to do in order to meet everyone’s expectations, or at least the obligations you set up for yourself assuming other people’s expectations of you. Anyway, the whole affair became very frazzled, and instead of sitting around enjoying time spent with family, we ended up spending Christmas Eve and Day amassing a car’s worth of plastic toys we’d need to throw away a week later when they all wound up broken. Damn you Indonesia!

So we decided, hey, we’re not really all that religious anyway, and we’re big nature hugging tree hippie types, so why not celebrate the Winter Solstice like our ancestors before us, and let’s keep it in the family: the immediate family.

We don’t hate Jesus, we certainly don’t hate family, we just wanted to have one holiday of the year where we could build our own traditions and spend some home baked time together.

So What Do You Do Differently?

Well, like I’d mentioned before, Yule lasts for 3 days, Yule’s Eve, Yule, and Yule After. Yule itself always falls on the Winter Solstice, which puts some meaning behind the entire event. The Winter Solstice has been celebrated by all types of people for thousands of years, long before Christmas was around. It’s the shortest, darkest day of the year, which is depressing, but that also means that from there on out, every day will get to be a little longer, a little brighter.

Each of the three days has a specific purpose in the celebration. Yule’s Eve is a time for us to focus on the past year, to think about what our life has been like and to be thankful for another successful 365 days of life. Yule itself is a day to relish and live in the moment, taking the day very easy and soaking up the family time. Yule After is a time to focus on the coming New Year and what we all might like to accomplish in it, or just to mentally prepare for another round of living.

We each give one another a single present and maybe a couple of “stocking stuffers”, chocolate, socks, maybe a snuggle or two. Partaking in hot chocolate and egg nog is encouraged, particularly with an alcoholic tweaking for the grown ups, and if someone has pie and some chocolate in one day, who’s going to get upset about it?

Austin was kind enough to get bitter cold for us last week and even overcast, dreary and hailing occasionally, which almost set the mood for the season. San Antonio, on the other hand, has us surrounded by palm trees and humidity to shake a stick through, so we’ll see how into the mood we can get. I think we’ll manage, enough Bailey’s and anyone can make the Yuletide gay.