The winter solstice, or Midwinter, marks the beginning of the year. The importance of this day was built into the sacred architecture of ancient sites such as New Grange and Maeshowe where the Sun’s light shines through to the inner chamber and Stonehenge where the Sun rises behind the heel stone on this day.
In our calendar, the year ends Oct 31/Nov1 and new year commences on the shortest day. In between is a dark, reflective, and gestational period. It is a time of contemplation, reflection, and divination.
Pagan Yule
With the arrival of the new year comes purifications, blessings, and boonful propitiation. Traditionally, the time between the solstice and the Julian New Year is a time of saining, customs of purification, and petitioning for a bountiful year to come. Young males dressed in cowhide circle houses deosil in the Western Highlands and Hebrides. Farmers wassail their fruit-bearing trees that they may have a productive year in Cornwall and the West Country. In Wales and the Marches, the Mari Lwyd, a decorated horse skull carried on a stick by someone cloaked in a white sheet, goes door-to-door challenging the occupants to a rhyming rap battle for beer and food.
This period of time is also called Yule a time of hunting following the close of harvest. This word comes from the Old Norse Jòl brought to the United Kingdom with the Vikings and Anglo-Saxons (who brought the practice of burning a Yule log with them). In the Anglo-Saxon calendar, the months on either side were named for the solstice (Ærra Ġēola, literally before Yule, and Æfterra Ġēola, after Yule).
In Welsh Druidry the festival is known as Alban Arthan where the Arch Druid would cut the mistletoe marking the death of the Holly King and the birth of the Oak King—a paradigm common to British Traditional Witchcraft.