Y is for Yule – by Elanor Gamgee-Gardner

Yule is the name generally given in most of the northern lands to the days surrounding the Turning of the Year, when the days no longer grow shorter.  Instead, the Sun begins rising earlier each morning, rather than later as happens between Midsummer and Yule.  In Gondor they use the older names, Mettarë and Yestarë, for the days we call First Yule and Second Yule, denoting the ending day of the old year and the first day of the new one, which serves the same purpose.

The Elves, who measure time in yeni, or in 144-year bunches, rather than in single years of the Sun as mortals do, still respect the days of Solstice, when the arc that the Sun travels each day reaches its greatest height in the summer and its lowest in the winter.  After the Summer Solstice the arc begins to flatten again and the daylight hours grow shorter, and after the Winter one the arc begins to rise and the daylight lengthens again.  The Elves of Rivendell hold special observances on those days, as they do in the spring and fall when all is in the middle, and days and nights are equal in length, which they call the equinoxes; and Legolas says that it is much the same in his father’s realm on the far side of the Misty Mountains and the Anduin.  Dwarves also observe Yule, although they have a different name in their own language for it.  In some lands a single day marks the Turning of the Year, while in others there are two days, with the actual moment of the turning marked at the midpoint between sunset and sunrise between them.

We are told by the Dwarves, Elves, and those Men who travel between different lands that in most places the Winter Solstice is used to mark the ending of the old year and beginning of the new year.  I suspect that this is true because the New Year is always about Hope, and the Winter Solstice marks when we have both Hope and Faith that the days have stopped growing shorter, that they will from now on grow longer, and that in spite of what cold days lie ahead, that Spring—and Summer and Fall and even next Winter—will each come in its proper time.  The cycle is reborn with all of its new hopes and potential problems; but at least this coming year we will have the chance to do it all better!

So, for all of Uncle Lord Strider announcing that the New Year starts now in the Spring on the anniversary of the downfall of Sauron, the peoples of Middle Earth, for all their nods of apparent appreciation for what Uncle Frodo and my dad did in climbing the Mountain, will still think of the true New Year starting at Yule.