Yulish things

Articles of interest about mo'time, the blogosphere, culture and society

Sunday, 24 December 2006

I usually like to post something about seasonal changes, like the winter solstice, and connect it to the various holidays celebrated around the world and throughout history. But somehow I just cruised through the solstice this year without realizing it. Ooops. So, let me rectify the situation:

In many cultures there are holidays and rituals associated with this day. The solstice (from the Latin solstitium, standing still sun) is the day of the Earth's maximum tilt either to or away from the sun, depending on the hemisphere.

The wikipedia, my favorite first stop for many kinds of research, has complete entries with lots of links for these keywords: solstice, Christmas and Yule.

Speaking of Yule, following the links I came upon this Icelandic site explaining their Yule traditions including this recipe for Laufabraud (Leaf Bread) which does not include leaves.

This essay about the winter holidays has a lot of material explaining the origins of seasonal celebrations in an even wider selection of cultures.

Happy reading and happy holidays to you all.

posted by: howard at 17:05 | link | comments (3) |

Bookmark this link on:

Comments:

#1 24 December 2006 - 17:10

Leaf bread looks better than the cat hair cookies we make. Princess get off the counter!

rustymadgal

#2 28 December 2006 - 23:28

There's an honest to goodness recipe for cookies called "Santa's Whiskers" which has little strands of coconut sticking out of each one to look like (duh!) Santa's Whiskers. Which has absolutely nothing to do with this post.

Happy Holidays! xoxoxo