Forlong - Rivers of Life

Sun Worship.
light which lighteth every man,” &c. The ceremonies in connection with light were
prosecuted more vigorously than ever up to Epiphany—the 6th of January,—when
all churches were lit up at noon with huge candles and many-coloured lamps, which
Jerome and other Fathers explained to mean “the manifestation of light” which
guided the eastern Magi to the cradle or cave.
On Christmas eve all the city of Constatinople used to be lit up with tapers and
torches until day; and so great was the illumination, says Gregory, that the occasion came
to be called Vigilia luminum, or “Feast of Lights.” The Christians used besides “to send
lights one to another,” as if the fetes of Sais had revived. Bakers then sent to their
customers Dows, Yuledows, or babies made of paste; and chandlers sent quaint sorts of
candles. Dow, it seems, comes from Dutch, Deeg, and theotiscanthihen, “to grow bigger” 1
—a curious explanation, when we know the root of the whole matter. The gifts of the day
to the “youth of both sexes who perambulate the towns and villages” signing carols are
also curious, being principally pears, apples, and nuts. Their cry was “hag-man-é (¡giamhnh?)
holy month, a Merry-Christmas and Happy New Year.” The Yule Clog, it is
thought, 2 “may be only the midmcmmer fire made within doors because of the cold
weather.” The Solar signification is clearly the same, but I doubt if we may change
this Christmas Feast of Lights to summer as the church did her feast of “All Saints.”
The meaning of the winter fete is returning life, and that of the midsummer perfected
light. Yet July may have some connection with Yule, for this is clearly called after
the Sun, who is in fact the Phallus—“Suil Clog,” or Sun Stone. July was Iulus; and
the 1st of August—once the first day of the Egyptian year, was called by ancient northerns
Gulle, or Gula day. Every Yule log was required to be a bare stump, and was
used not only for heating but for lighting purposes, taking the place on the sacred family
altar which the churches afterwards fondly gave to large candles, those sine-qua-nons
of most faiths. The first day of the Yule was the day our ancestors set up stones
and danced round them, thus, especially adoring Virility. Only lately the good
christian Scotch in the isle of North. Ronaldshay used to set up a large stone—ten
feet high and some four feet in diameter—in the middle of a plain, and there, on the
first day of the year, the youth of both sexes went and danced round it, particularly
during moonlight, 3 with no other music than their own singing. This was but the continuation
of the worship of the Oak-tree, which then gave forth its child the mistletoe; and
with boughs of oak, “holme, ivy, bayes, and mistletoe,” did all then deck, not only their
sacred altars, but garnish also the wells, pumps, and “the standards in the streets;”
and much affliction did it cause many good people in London when—during a severe
storm on the morning of Candlemas 1444—“there was uprooted a standard of tree”
which had been set up in the midst of the pavement, “fast in the ground, and nailed
1 Brand’s Ants., 163, Annot.
2 Brand, op. cit.
3 Brand’s Pop. Ants., i. 19, Bohn’s ed. Clearly
431
these Scotch had very diminutive ideas of their
Lingam god compared with the Babylonians; see
the article as described in Dan. iii. 1.