Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Christmas, or the season or feast celebrating Christmas.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The season or feast of Christmas.
- To celebrate Yule or Christmas.
Wiktionary
- n. Christmastide, the Christmas season, the Twelve Days of Christmas (between December 24th and January 6th).
- n. A pagan wintertime holiday celebrated by Germanic peoples, particularly the Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon peoples, or a modern reconstruction of this holiday celebrated by neo-pagans.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Christmas or Christmastide; the feast of the Nativity of our Savior.
WordNet 3.0
- n. period extending from Dec. 24 to Jan. 6
Etymologies
- From the Middle English yole, from Old English geōl, geola ("Christmastide, midwinter"), either cognate with or from Old Norse jól. From Proto-Germanic *jehwlan. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English yole, from Old English geōl. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“What is called the birch or “birk in Yule even’” was probably the _Yule clog_.”
“And the word "Yule" must be significant here as well, since pagans of all sorts have been roistering at the winter solstice ever since records were kept, and Christians have been faced with the choice of either trying to beat them or join them.”
The Wall Street Journal: Forced Merriment: The True Spirit of Christmas
“They have imported Brown Ale, Pale Ale, Porter, Winter Ale which I call Yule Beer or Merry Christmas, or God Jul, and Imperial Stout.”
“Like its counterpart in the winter, Giuli from which we get the word Yule, Litha was a double-length month, or two months of the same name, placed either side of the midsummer solstice.”
“The festive fires of Christmas were regarded as symbols of the sun, who then began his upward journey in the heavens, while the name Yule was traced back to the”
“The name Yule carries us back to the far-off ages when the heathen nations of the North held their annual winter festival in honour of the sun.”
“The word Yule itself means wheel, the wheel being a pagan symbol for the sun.”
“I don’t mind if some people prefer to call it Yule (though that’s actually the day after the solstice).”
Just To Show I Didn’t Make It Up…….. « POLICE INSPECTOR BLOG
“Anyone who thinks that winter solstice couldn't possibly have spawned the rich array of celebrations that we now call Yule and Christmas and Divali and Hannukkah and Kwanzaa never lived in Seattle.”
The Huffington Post: Valerie Tarico: Solstice Is The Reason For The Season!
“Back in 1994, Kee Chung of SUNY-Buffalo and Raymond Cox of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology applied an equation called the Yule-Simon Distribution to this question.”
The Superstar Equation, Disproved? - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘Yule’.
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Winter Solstice
Words that have something to do with the holidays that fall on or near the Winter Solstice
Yule, Yule-log, holly, yew, bay, bay-leaf, bayberry, Holly King, Oak King, mistletoe, Christmas tree, star in the East and 150 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for Yule.
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