Yule

Yule or Yuletide ("Yule time") is a festival observed by the historical Germanic peoples, later undergoing Christianised reformulation resulting in the now better-known Christmastide.

• So the shortest day came, and the year died,
  And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
  Came people singing, dancing,
  To drive the dark away.
  They lighted candles in the winter trees;
  They hung their homes with evergreen;
  They burned beseeching fires all night long
  To keep the year alive,
  And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
  They shouted, reveling.
  Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
  Echoing behind us — Listen!!
  All the long echoes sing the same delight,
  This shortest day,
  As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
  They carol, feast, give thanks,
  And dearly love their friends,
  And hope for peace.
  And so do we, here, now,
  This year and every year.
  Welcome Yule!
  • Susan Cooper, in "The Shortest Day"

• The grate had been removed from the wide overwhelming fireplace, to make way for a fire of wood, in the midst of which was an enormous log glowing and blazing, and sending forth a vast volume of light and heat; this I understood was the Yule-log, which the Squire was particular in having brought in and illumined on a Christmas eve, according to ancient custom.
  • Washington Irving, in "Christmas Eve" in The Sketch-book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent (1820)

• It is Christmas in the mansion,
  Yule-log fires and silken frocks;
  It is Christmas in the cottage,
  Mother's filling little socks.
  It is Christmas on the highway,
  In the thronging, busy mart;
  But the dearest, truest Christmas
  Is the Christmas in the heart.

• Encyclopedic article on Yule on Wikipedia
• The dictionary definition of Yule on Wiktionary
• Media related to Yule on Wikimedia Commons
• Yule Origins, Lore, Legends, and Customs
• The Eight Great Festivals of Asatru