- The Guardian, Monday 22 December 2008
Pagan festivals have over-excited the everyday world since the time of Agricola, when Roman spin doctors linked Druids with human sacrifice and dodgy doings in sacred groves. Hippy obsessions with Stonehenge in the late 20th century were another setback, mixing farce with justified concern that an extraordinary monument might be damaged and unsolved clues to its purpose trampled into Midsummer mud. Yesterday saw the happier side of the tradition, and the more genuine one, as modest gatherings took place all over the country at Neolithic sites. This was the winter solstice, much less comfortable but more important in ancient times than 21 June. It was the beginning of the festival of Yule, the primal need to mark the end of lengthening nights and the real beginning of the new year. Despised and rejected initially by later religions, it survives both in borrowed ritual - the holly and the ivy - and directly in Yule logs. These may now be chocolate, more often than not, but they serve the same purpose as the sputtering brand in the fire: to cheer us through the dark months. We do not, and may never, know the precise purpose of national glories such as Stonehenge or Long Meg in Cumbria, but the scholarship and care involved in their positioning is unquestionable. Primitive they may have been, but the henge-builders had a sense of both earth and sky that resonates today. A walk, a beautiful place to stop and think, cheerful company. Human sacrifice it isn't.
Staff
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