December has begun and the main thing everyone is talking about is Christmas, but I've decided to take another take on festivals at this time of the year as it is a very important date for people that celebrate Yule (Which is similar to the Winter Solstice). When I was younger I used to see Christmas decorations saying things such as "Happy Yuletide!" and here the word "yule" in old Christmas songs so I just assumed it was another way of saying Christmas. To some extent Yule is just another word for Christmas and in lots of languages (Which some of you probably speak and know about) Yule is a more regularly used word than Christmas but it has much more meaning than that which most people don't know about.

Yule is actually different to Christmas and is much much older, they happen around the same time and before Christianity was introduced to the world Yule was the most widely acknowledged celebration in mid-winter. It was mainly celebrated by people of Germanic, Northern European origin and is now classed as a Pagan and Celtic Festival. You may notice that cards that mention Yuletide and not Christmas seem to have lots of natural imagery on them such as holly, mistletoe and snow, this is because Pagan religions focus mainly on nature etc and the point of Yule was to worship the Sun Goddess to ensure she would return after winter so the crops would return and the people could survive - without this the people thought they may die.

Many of the popular "Christmas" traditions aren't Christian at all and you may be surprised to find out that most of the things you may do are actually Yuletide traditions!