Crone's Corner - Reclaiming the Winter Solstice

by Melanie Fire Salamander

In the British Isles, Celtic Yule traditions survive with amazing resilience. The fight
of the Oak and Holly Kings,
representatives of the waxing and waning year, is recalled in the still-current hunting
of the wren -- a custom
also found in ancient Greece and Rome. In the myth behind the practice, the robin
redbreast, identified with the
Oak King, caught and killed the wren, representative of the waning year and the Holly
King.

The robin traditionally trapped the wren in an ivy bush, in Ireland a holly bush, the
Farrars write. The robin's
tree was the birch, the tree associated with the after-solstice period in the Celtic tree
calendar. In the wren hunt,
according to Pennick, a group of droluns (Wren Boys) captured the wren, which during the
rest of the year was
sacrosanct. The droluns ensconced the bird in a lantern and trooped it around the village
on a holly branch on its
way to death. Alternatively, men with birch rods chased the wren and killed it. Wren Boys
still tour County Clare
in west Ireland on December 26, now a group of adult musicians who go door to door with a
wren effigy on a holly
branch. In County Mayo, Wren Boys are holly-bearing children, including girls, who knock
on doors repeating a
traditional verse that asks for money to bury the wren.

In Scotland and the North of England, in a possibly related custom, masked and caroling
children formerly
celebrated Hogmany on New Year's Eve, traveling the neighborhood soliciting oat cakes.
The wren's rival,
the robin of the waxing year, was linked to Robin Hood, according to Robert Graves in The
White Goddess.
Robin was a god of the witches; Graves writes that a London tract of 1693 named Robin
Goodfellow an
ithyphallic witch-god. In Cornwall, he notes, "robin" means phallus. Robin "Hood," or
"Hod," was
thought to exist in the hod, the log at the back of the fire, in other words the Yule
log. Woodlice who ran
from the burning Yule log were called "Robin Hood's steeds," and Robin was said to escape
up the
chimney as a robin.

The Yule log is traditionally of oak, again connecting it with the Oak King; in some
places it's burnt bit
by bit through the twelve days of Christmas, but elsewhere celebrants retain a chunk to
light the next Yule
log. Another British Christmas custom recalling the kings' fight was traditional mummery,
in which the
brilliantly armored St. George fought and defeated a dark Turkish knight. But, as
Valiente notes, the victorious
St. George immediately cried out he had killed his brother, showing that "darkness and
light, winter and summer,
are complementary. " A mysterious doctor revived the Turk, and all rejoiced. Too often, as
the Farrars
write, this understanding of light and dark's balance turns to a contest of good vs.
evil. In Dewsbury, Yorkshire,
for nearly seven centuries, church bells knelled "the Old Lad's Passing" or "the Devil's
Knell" at Christmas Eve's
eleventh hour, warning the Devil that Christ was coming.

Other connections link the Holly King and the Devil. The Farrars tie the Devil's
nickname, Old Nick, to Nik, a
name for Woden, "very much a Holly King." Santa Claus -- St. Nicholas -- is likewise a
disguised Holly King.
Not only do households put up holly garlands in his honor, in early tales he rode a
horse, as Woden does,
rather than driving reindeer.
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