I Just Learned Why We Have Yule Logs, And It's Not Why I Thought

I’ve been buying Advent calendars for years without really knowing what the word means (turns out it’s from the Latin “Adventus,” meaning “coming”). 

And to be honest, I only just learned that “solstice” refers to the sun appearing to “stand still” – astrologically speaking, winter solstice is a brief moment in which the sun lies above the Tropic of Capricorn. 

This year, the true solstice will happen at 9:21am, December 21, in the UK.

While diving down that rabbit hole, I also learned why we call this time of the year “Yuletide,” where “Yule” comes from to begin with, and what a log has to do with any of it. 

Where does the word “Yule” come from? 

Many cultures celebrate the winter solstice, as it means the long nights will grow gradually shorter and shorter.

One of those happened in Scandinavia. Per Merriam-Webster, “Yule” comes from: “Middle English yol, from Old English geōl; akin to Old Norse jōl, a pagan midwinter festival”.

Britannica explained that the festival, which was pre-Christian and likely took place across parts of Northern Europe as well as Scandinavia, is “one of the oldest winter solstice festivals”. 

One of the first written references to the holiday is from the 8th century via monk Bede. It referred at the time to a months-long period.

In fact, it was so prevalent that some variant of “Yule” is used to mean Christmas in multiple languages and countries.

Historians think the original celebrations might have focused on light, possibly due to the solstice link. 

Why do we have Yule logs?

Per the BBC, the Yule log was originally an entire tree, lit with the remnants of last year’s one. 

People thought that if they kept the wood burning for the entire 12 days they believed the solstice lasted, “then the sun would be persuaded to move again, and make the days grow longer”. 

If it went out, though, that spelt bad luck. 

And some Christmas superstitions say that you should keep the ashes of the Yule log for your plants – burying them along with new seeds is believed to assure a mega crop.

Like Advent calendars and Easter Eggs, though, the Yule log tradition reached the festive chocolate event horizon in the past couple of hundred years. 

The first Yule log recipe (La Bûche de Noël) appears to have been published in 1895.