Yule Greetings

Candles all lit
Originally uploaded by sunasak

We celebrated Yule last night as a family--the previous Yule Lee and I spent alone, and it was really special, but this was special in another really nice way. The photo is of the altar with the candles all lit.

Both kids had asked to "do something" for Yule, so I tried to make it special for them. WE had the usual 4 corner candles plus a bonus one in the south, and I put a Waterford glass with water from St. Brighid's holy well in Ireland on the west. The north had a pentacle and the east the athame a friend gave me. We had a reindeer standing in for the god as he goes from holly king to ivy king, and a white goddess statue. Around the candles were holly and ivy, along with white stones and nuts (pecans and acorns--these represented seeds holding potential for future growth). The full moon was represented by the altar cloth, which had moons on it.

In the ritual, we talked about our memories of Yule, then mentioned a struggle we were dealing with. Then we chose a nut, dipped it in the water and stated our intention to plant a seed of change in ourselves. We will keep the nuts to remind us. After that we each did a three-card tarot spread followed by a Yule message card. Mine was funny, because I got an anxiety chest pain as I was shuffling and thought to myself, "I bet I draw the three of swords," then I did, as my message (that card depicts a heart with three swords in it). Very amusing to me. Everyone interpreted their cards and enjoyed that part.

Finally I talked about how we used to exhange gifts in our family at Yule (one each), but that gifts didn't need to be tangible. And we then gave the person on the left of us an intangible gift, a trait of skill we hope they will grow to have. These were really wonderful to hear, and Tuba Boy even gave Lee a bonus--said he wanted him to be more transparent, because he can never tell when he's angry at him. Sweet.

After the ritual, we had cakes and ale (wine/soda and ginger cookies), and you can see that I was very happy with our holiday at that point (had not had wine prior to that, honest) and I did a longer tarot reading for Tuba Boy. It was overflowing with cups and love. Hmmm.

I will write more after the exciting church Christmas pageant, at which we will wear our ritual robes, but pretend they are Jesus-land outfits.

(There are more Yule photos on Flickr--feel free to go check them out)