Gather Round the Yule Log

Merry Christmas

from Colonial Quills!

I'm sure everyone has been enjoying the many seasonal posts up this month--I know I have! It's always so interesting to learn the ways our forefathers celebrated.

So as you're enjoying your own traditions on these busy, family-centered days, if you happen by our virtual home, I hope you'll gather round our blazing fire and enjoy a few moments of looking back.

I'd often heard the term "yule log" growing up...and even helped my sister make a cake designed to look like one, once. But I only recently bothered looking up what it was. It seems that back many centuries ago--and on up through colonial days--in order to keep a fire blazing in the hearth for Christmas celebration, families would bring in an entire tree trunk! They would light the end in the fireplace and just keep shoving it in as it burned. Let's hope they were attentive, or more than the trunk would have been consumed, I daresay.

One Monsieur Durand was traveling through Maryland in 1686 and stopped in at a home along the Potomac for Christmas. He reports that he was met with “the largest hospitality. He had store of good wine and other things to drink, and a frolic ensued. He called in three fiddlers, a clown, a tight rope dancer and an acrobatic tumbler, and gave us all the divertisement one would wish. It was very cold but no one thought of going near the fire because they never put less than the trunk of a tree upon it and so the entire room was kept warm. . .the  frolic continued well into the afternoon of the second day. . .”

So from ours to yours, have a frolicking, blessed, and happy Christmas!

Posted by Roseanna M. White