Advent Calendar December 8

When fire was a Christmas essential

Bringing home the Yule Log

You may do without beef and plum-pudding; even the absence of mince-pie may be tolerated…but a huge, heaped-up, over heaped-up, all-attracting fire, with a semicircle of faces about it, is not to be denied us. It is the lar and genius of the meeting; the proof positive of the season; the representative of all our warm emotions and bright thoughts; the glorious eye of the room; the inciter to mirth, yet the retainer of order; the amalgamater of the age and sex; the universal relish. Tastes may differ even on a mince-pie; but who gainsays a fire?

A contributor to the New Monthly Magazine, December 1, 1825

A welcoming fire is still important in many homes, but it is a perhaps now not quite as essential as the passionate writer in the British magazine suggested 199 years ago.

Yule is the name for a pre-Christian winter festival that was celebrated by Germanic and other European tribes. Some sources credit the 10th century Norwegian King Haakon with moving the date of Yule to coincide with Christmas as a first step to converting the country to Christianity.