Re: [tied] Yule's etymology and IE roots (or not)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Patrick Ryan" <proto-language@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2005 2:12 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Yule's etymology and IE roots (or not)


> I cannot resist this either.
>
> Richard, after XMAS?
>
> Patrick
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Carl Hult" <datalampa@...>
> To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2005 8:12 AM
> Subject: Re: [tied] Yule's etymology and IE roots (or not)
>
>
> If I give you a description of what they did in these times when the
> word was first attested, can you make a more direct etymological
> description then?
>
> The first time the word yule was recorded it was said that they DRANK
> yule, not celebrated. By that they didn´t mean that yule was a drink
> but it was THE drink of all drinks, the drink which signified the end
> of a year and the birth of a new. This description has led many
> amateurs to link it to wheel, on the notion that the year is a wheel
> and when they got to the top of the wheel it all started over.
>
> Carl Hult
>
>
> ***
> Patrick:
>
> The celebration of Yule was, most probably, originally associated with the
> winter solstice, the longest night of the year.
>
> Yule, of course, suggests PIE *yeu-, 'juice'; but, of course, we also have
> *yu/u:-, 'howl', with the desired -*l extension.
>
> Our ancestors believed that the sun, an old man of 'one', died on this
> night, and was reborn as an infant at the sunrise of the next day - a more
> than sufficient excuse for sad howling turning to howling with joy in the
> course of the night.
>
> The burning of the Yule-log would be the ceremonial cremation of the dead
> sun; and the emotional nature of his 'death' and his 'rebirth' would have
> been greatly enhanced by copious quantities of 'juice'.
>
> So, so far as the actual origin of Yule is concerned, I cast my vote for
> '(night of) howling'.
>
> Rather than pagans adopting a Christian conceit, I think Christians
> accommodated existing pagan beliefs by re-setting Christ's birth at the
> winter solstice (it had been at the vernal equinox or thereabouts,
> symbolizing new growth rather than new life per se), which might have been
> an exact correlation had they not botched the calendar.
>
> ***