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When the weather outside is frightful, a video of burning logs in a fireplace may not generate actual heat, but it sure makes a room feel delightful. The yule log has its roots and often simply was a root in Norse mythology, and from there it was all up and up.
It became a symbol of Christmas, morphed into a delicate holiday dessert, made TV history, and is currently racking up views by the hundreds of thousands as a sensory experience minus the pesky fire-starting.
Why does a big burning stick have such a hold over the holidays? Today, yule find out you had to see that one coming. As with many traditions we now associate with Christmas, the yulelog is a great reminder that the season is a celebration of the time when the night is longest, just before the scales tip back in favor of daylight. For the most part, yule log rituals involve selecting, celebrating, burning, and then saving a piece of wood—sometimes an entire trunk, sometimes a log, sometimes just a small branch.
It all ties back to celebrating health and wealth—among Celtic Brits and Gaelic Europeans, with whom the practice originated, people really put a lot of hope into one little log. The dish has also become a popular centerpiece for corporate Christmas events and large family gatherings. In densely populated cities, people generally don't have fireplaces to create an ambient holiday atmosphere, and the show solved their problem. The Yule Log was highly successful and aired every Christmas until Today, people can purchase digital software for their computers or cast onto their TV screens, or they can play looping Yule Log YouTube videos—all of which show logs burning in a fireplace, complete with sound effects.
The Yule Log dates back an incredibly long time, and it's fascinating to trace its evolution to the cake we eat today. To imagine a day fireplace ritual evolved to a camera pointed at a burning log streamed to people in apartments: it's a lot to take in! So, if Jack Frost is nipping at your nose, and yuletide carols are being sung by a choir, know the yule log is here to stay. Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.
Table of Contents show. Yuletide Today. What is a Yule Log? Origins and History of the Yule Log. Christianity and the Yule Log. The Decline of the Wooden Log. Earliest History of the Yule Log.
Evolution of the Yule Log. The Modern Wooden Yule Log. Yule, the Yule Log, and Popular Culture. Yule Log: From Wood to Table. Share Tweet Pin Email Print. Gerard Paul. The log would be lit from the remains of the previous year's log which had been carefully stored away and slowly fed into the fire through the Twelve Days of Christmas. It was considered important that the re-lighting process was carried out by someone with clean hands. Nowadays, of course, most people have central heating so it is very difficult to burn a tree!
In Provence in France , it is traditional that the whole family helps to cut the log down and that a little bit is burnt each night. If any of the log is left after Twelfth Night, it is kept safe in the house until the next Christmas to protect against lightning! In some parts of The Netherlands, this was also done, but the log had to be stored under a bed! In some eastern European countries, the log was cut down on Christmas Eve morning and lit that evening. The ashes were sometimes stored under a bed in order to make a home immune to evil spirits and lightning strikes.
English Christmas traditions called for a great oak to be cut on Christmas Eve. And it had to be able to burn through all 12 days of Christmas , during which time family members would refrain from labor to celebrate the season.
The log would be brought home with much celebrating and everyone pulling it home [source: Morton ]. While a proper yule log isn't a common sight in 21st-century fireplaces, it can be found in holiday kitchens -- in the form of a dessert. It comes in flavors like chocolate and gingerbread and is frosted in a wood-grain pattern. It's believed that the dessert was created in response to French families who didn't have a fireplace for a real yule log in their homes but wanted to share in the holiday tradition [source: Jaworski ].
Yule log cakes are readily available in French bakeries, but many residents in the United States must make their own version of the delicacy from scratch. But France isn't the only place that has adapted the concept of the yule log. Urban areas like New York City have high-density populations, and, as a result, space is at a minimum. Therefore, fireplaces are a rare commodity in apartments and condominiums.
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