How do you like to decorate during the Christmas season? This week I added to our family room décor by setting up a game table near the fire and dumping a 500-piece puzzle on top. I turned on Barbara Streisand’s Christmas CD and proceeded to quietly sort out the straight-edged pieces from the rest. I knew the kids would join me, for puzzles and puppies are kid magnets and this activity contained both elements. Before I knew it someone was adjusting the light on the table and several sets of hands began forming the border to a puzzle that features golden retriever puppies wearing Santa hats.

Because a puzzle can only hold my attention for a very few minutes I chose to sit back and observe the kids. What I saw gave me a rush of contentment, for they were unplugged from all electronic devices. They hummed and whistled right along with Barbara with almost no complaint. They snacked on the flavored popcorn out of the metal can I had just purchased and talked about advent calendars and Christmas memories and music. They playfully pushed each other aside to reach desired puzzle pieces and celebrated when holes were filled with just the right pieces.

While watching the scene I noticed someone had again placed a decorated Yule log directly in front of the woodstove — the only place it has inhabited since it was given to us as a gift several years ago. When I interjected into the conversation that I liked how someone had placed the log in its traditional place, the puzzle builders looked at me like I had lost my mind.

“What’s a Yule log?” they asked.

To avoid further decorating without thoroughly understanding our props, I think it might be useful to take a look at Yule logs this week.

Yule logs predate Christianity and can be traced to ancient Scandinavian communities who honored their god Thor and celebrated the winter solstice by burning a huge log. The celebration of Yule began several weeks before the winter solstice and wrapped up a couple of weeks after. Because this time of the year was and continues to be the darkest of the year, ancient communities gathered in celebration: They had survived the darkness! They eagerly anticipated longer days as the sun moved northward from its southern reaches.

To prepare for the celebration a designated family would donate the largest tree to be found on their property and enlist the help of a team of horses or oxen to drag the log through the streets to a central location in town. The log was then lit with great ceremony and townspeople commonly tossed in sprigs of holly to symbolically burn up their troubles of the past. Extended celebrations that included music, food, games and merriment followed the lighting. Customarily small pieces of the log were saved not only to start the fire in the coming year’s celebration but families believed that to possess a piece of the log guarded them against lightning and home fires.

It seems the custom spread, for researches find evidence of celebrations as far south as Greece and as far north as Siberia. In the 4th century Pope Julius I decided he liked the tradition so much he placed his own spin on it, transforming it into a Christian celebration. The fire, he decided, would represent the light of the Savior instead of the light of the sun. Tossing in holly to symbolically burn up mistakes and regrets was equated to Christ’s ability to burn up or consume sin.

Burning the Yule log therefore became one of the earliest of Christian traditions and it spread as quickly and globally as Christianity. Various cultures embraced the practice and added their own unique customs. In Appalachia they burned a “backstick” soaked in a nearby stream. As long as the wet log burned, community celebrations continued.

When open fireplaces began disappearing in France, replaced by the use of cast iron stoves, French women rolled cake filled with a whipped cream filling into the shape of a Yule log and consumed their log in celebration.

While some Christians, in an attempt to purify their Christmas celebrating, look upon the pagan origination of Yule logs with some discomfort, I find such information unifying. Humans have always longed for reasons to gather and celebrate, to connect with each other and gain some assurance that the new year will be filled with hope and light.

God understood this need and sent Jesus Christ. May the log burning and the cake eating begin!