waffle

In just over a month, what a large part of the world calls ‘Christmas’ will happen, but what I celebrate is not Christmas. The word Christmas is, if you look at it, very Christianity-centered – Christmas. (Quite a lot of people have begun to abbreviate this word as X-mas, perhaps to get away from the religious meaning of the word.) Jul, traditionally, is the scandinavian (pan norwegian/swedish/danish) word for either of Christmas and Yule, and Yule is a religious celebration of the winter solstice by some pagans. Neither of these is what I celebrate either. I’m not christian, nor am I a pagan; both imply believing in that one or more gods exist, that one created us and that we should worship them and model our lives around them and their ideas because of that.

No, what I celebrate is what I call Jul.

Jul in my meaning is very simple. Around the 21st and 22nd of December is for the Northern hemisphere the darkest time of the year. If you’re anywhere near the polar circle, it’s probably fucking cold, too. All things considered you would probably feel fairly miserable sleeping outside at this time. If we go back a few thousand years, all we did was sleep outside at this time. There wasn’t any light and heat unless you managed to get a bonfire running, all there was was cold and lesser cold.

Jul is simply the natural optimistic thing to do. Celebrate that we’ve come this far, the progression of us as a species and that we can choose when we want to get cold and when not to. Get together with your family and your friends. Eat and drink. Have a good time. Appreciate the company, support and friendship of other people. And relax in the notion that while the next three months will contain quite a lot of freezing your ass off, you have it quite better than those guys a few thousand years ago, and that there’s only five months until the warmest season of the year begins.

I believe this to be enough on its own to be worthy of participation. I don’t think that you need to be religious or think up other reasons to celebrate this holiday. And I hope that you will join me in celebrating the essence of Jul in about a month’s time.