Did you know…?
In the wrong hands, one Christmas custom can bring a whole lot of bad luck.
Although not as popular in today’s Christmas traditions, burning a yule log was once the staple of holiday celebrations. The origins of the yule log (which, by the way, was often not a log at all, but just a stump or a root of a tree) are pagan; people brought the log—as well as holly and ivy—into the house to ward off evil spirits. This may explain why the custom is fraught with rituals and superstitions—and why breaking any one of them means bad luck falling to the family in the coming year.
For starters, buying a yule log brings you bad luck; however, cutting one down from your own land or nicking one from a neighbor’s property brings you prosperity. Then there is the entire lighting ritual: the yule log must be lit using a remnant of the previous year’s log, which had been kept under the homeowner’s bed to keep the house safe from fire and lightning. If you don’t light the log with the remnant, it’s bad luck; and if the log doesn’t light on the first try, you guessed it—more misfortune will be coming your way.
There’s more: the log can only be lit on Christmas Eve, before the Christmas Eve supper is served. Once lit, the log has to be kept burning for twelve hours, but that’s harder than it sounds—as long as there is food on the table, you can’t stir the embers or tend to the log in any way. Touch the embers, and you know what will happen.
Last but not least is the superstition about shadows. If the light of the yule log casts someone’s shadow on the wall and it appears to have no head, that person will have the worst luck of all: the superstition was that that person would die within the year.
With all of these rituals and superstitions, it’s no wonder that nowadays people opt for a buche de noel—a yule log made out of sponge cake!
Did you also know…?
- Potpourri
- Sweden once had two Leaps Days in one year.
- Doorways make you forget.
- In the wrong hands, one Christmas custom can bring a whole lot of bad luck.
- Because of a printer’s error, one edition of the Bible went from pious to downright wicked.
- Singing “Happy Birthday to You” in public can land you in jail.
- According to Italian space trackers, there are cosmonauts stranded in space.
- In Denmark, it is illegal to name your child Apple.
- A small strait off the coast of Wales is the scene of the strangest coincidence ever recorded.
- The electric chair was invented by a dentist.
- Nutmeg can kill you.
- A Frenchman once ate an entire airplane.
- Shakespeare wrote the first knock-knock joke.
- In fifteenth-century Britain, people were banned from wearing buttons.
- The fear of Friday the 13th is called Friggatriskaidekaphobia.
- The Mayflower set sail from Devonshire, England, on this day—in 1957.
- There is no need to be wary of Ides.
- The word “Abracadabra” was originally used to cure malaria.
- Post-it® notes were invented in church.