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Merry Wiccan Christmas
Local witches observe some very familiar holiday traditions
by Mike Gibson
Another traditional performance that’s part of the Fete is the Mummers’ play. Dotson describes it as both slapstick and symbolic; each Mummers’ play includes someone’s death to represent the end of the year. In each village, one family would be responsible for performing the Mummers’ play each year and carry that tradition through each generation. There are multiple Mummers’ play scripts to choose from. This year’s story was about a dragon that kills three fools. St. George kills the dragon and calls a doctor, who then revives the three fools—the symbol for the rebirth in the new year. Dotson explains that the Mummers would travel from house to house to perform, being compensated with food and drink. The scripts were open for improvisation, which might have included jokes about the king or local political figures.
“It was a safe way to make jokes about things you couldn’t normally,” she says.
Satire, symbolism, ritual, religion, drunk fools, family traditions... Doesn’t sound so very different from the way we still celebrate Christmas, does it?
Tazlyn, aka Tammy Young, has family roots in Judaism, but she married a Presbyterian. Now two of the children from that unlikely union are Christian, while a third is pagan. Her husband, Wolf (Bill Young), in the meantime, abandoned his Presbyterian roots some 10 years ago, adopting instead the Native American spiritual practices of his Cherokee and Chickasaw ancestors.
“When this time of year comes around, my family celebrates Hanukah, Christmas, and Yule,” she says of her household’s seemingly incompatible mélange of faiths. “We’ll celebrate anything, as long as it has to do with food.”
That kind of religious and cultural cross-pollination might seem unusual, especially to most Knoxvillians, for whom faith is often a matter of exclusivity. But Tazlyn and Wolf aren’t most Knoxvillians, inasmuch as they are practicing Wiccans, and cognizant of the densely intertwining roots of most Western religious tradition.
“All paths are separate,” explains Wolf, director of Knoxville’s Native Spirit Community Church. “But they all lead to one place.”
And like others of their broad-minded faith, they celebrate Yule—the pagan (an umbrella term referring to all non-Abrahamic religions) equivalent of what most people call Christmas—secure in the knowledge that they hold as much claim to its familiar traditions as anybody else.
Wicca, it seems, is many things to many people. Deriving from a host of ancient European belief systems, it coalesced as a modern movement in the 20th century, chiefly owing to the efforts of Gerald Gardner, a retired customs officer and world traveler who in 1939 was initiated into a witches’ coven in his native England.
Today, the only tenets recognized as universal among Wiccans are a reverence for the Earth, and a belief in the dual masculine/feminine nature of God. The other niggling details—things such as God’s name and address, His/Her favored rituals, or preferred modes of supplication—are a matter of personal intuition, and may encompass everything from Native American spirituality to more liberal brands of Christianity.
“We all answer to different names, depending on who is speaking to us; you may be ‘dad’ to your children, and ‘Joe’ to your friends, and ‘boss’ to your employees,” observes one local Wiccan. “We feel God and Goddess are the same way.”
So how do Wiccans celebrate Christmas? It might be better to ask how Christians have appropriated the traditions of Yule. A pagan holiday of Saxon derivation, Yule falls on the winter solstice, or shortest day of the year (that would be Dec. 21 in 2004). Its rituals—cutting and decorating trees, for instance, or the practice of adorning rooms with sprigs of holly, or the lighting of the Yule log—were conceived as symbolic means of preserving life until winter’s end and the return of longer days.
“Christmas and Yule are the same holiday,” says Gaia, a member of Knoxville’s Wiccan community who prefers to be identified only by her Wiccan name. “One is about the birth of Christ; the other is the rebirth of the Sun God.”
And though Yule traditions vary among Wiccan families, perhaps moreso than Christmas traditions vary among others, the familiar staples of food, family and gift exchange are nearly universal.
The gifts given among Wiccans are usually more interesting than standard Wal-Mart fodder, however; Wolf, for instance, has made presents of his own home-made dreamcatchers and traditional hand-crafted Native American jewelry to his friends and family. Greyfix, a fellow Wiccan, also of Native American descent, took up carpentry in 2003, and made each of his family members their own treasure chest. “Whatever craft or skill I learn that year, I try to give people something with it come Yule time,” he says.
“Most pagans have Christian backgrounds, so parts of our celebrations are similar,” Gaia says. “We like to pass out gifts. But we often like to request that gifts be handmade—things that truly come from the heart, as opposed to something you bought at the mall.”
Some Wiccans favor more exotic Yule recognitions. “Symbolically, this is the time we must entreat the sun to come back,” says Patty Erion, high priestess of the Terra Asa coven in Cocke County. Her coven’s annual Yule celebrations, held on her property just outside Cosby, usually include a ritual drama—perhaps a reenactment of the pagan story of the Oak King (who is born on the summer solstice, and dies with the onset of winter) and the Holly King (born on Yule, and more capable than his predecessor of surviving the winter chill.)
“We cast our circles, call in the four elements, invite the God and Goddess, and then perform the ritual drama,” Erion says. “Most years, some sort of magical thing happens during our ceremony, a channeling or a visitation from the God or Goddess. We’ve seen timely thunderclaps. We’ve seen shooting stars. Once we had a fox visit our circle at the height of our ritual.”
She allows, however, that even members of Terra Asa make a few concessions to modern living. “Some covens prefer traditional foods for their Yule feast,” Erion says. “But this year, I understand that we’re having prime rib.”
And despite the multitude of negative associations many non-pagans attach to pagan beliefs (the stigmas of devil worship, black magic, etc.), most pagan families have a great deal in common with their Christian contemporaries when it comes to celebrating the holiday season.
At the home of local Wiccans Greg and Sarajane Tracy, for instance, this year’s Yule will be as full of warmth and good cheer as any classic Christmas tale, as the couple and their two daughters will celebrate the return of their son Garrett from Iraq, where he is stationed as a firefighter for the Navy.
“Our big thing is just being with family,” says Sarajane. “We do exchange small amounts of gifts. Instead of turkey or ham, we make fondue, with meats, seafood, veggies and peanut oil. But that’s not really a Wiccan tradition,” she confesses, chuckling. “That’s more of a Greg-and-me tradition.”
And just as many Christian parents are prone to do, Wolf admits that his fondest Yule memories are tied up in his children. “It’s really about the kids,” he says. “Each child gets a gift, and they always really like what they receive. That’s something you relish as a parent.”
All of which goes to show that perhaps separate paths can lead to the same destination, and that Christmas and the Wiccan Yule are even more alike than the nativity rituals, festooned trees and boughs of holly might suggest.
December 16, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 51
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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