YULE FIRES
The Peace of the Gods which our Aryan forbears knew descended at
Yuletide hovers near always as we watch the Yule log, whether in
the keen air under the stars, or in the tapestried shelter about
the carefully fended hearth. Man loves warmth, but he worships
flame, as he always has since he first saw it fall from heaven,
though few of us now make our prayer to it. Its flicker in the
night will draw us far; nor are we alone in this, for all the wild
things of the wood come as well and toss back its flare from eyes
wide with wonder. As they stand at gaze before it, unwinking, so
do we, letting its wordless message touch the primal fonts of
peace. Around the camp-fire, whether without or within, all men
are brothers and the breaking of bread and the tasting of salt are
but the more formal symbols of fellowship. Man has made God in
many images besides his own, but none has found a finer symbolism
than the ancient Persians, who saw in flame the most ethereal
expression of beneficence and purity. The race has grown older now
and we strive to outgrow what we call childish things, yet we get
new strength for dwelling in our higher levels of mature thought
by dropping back now and then to the primitive customs and
touching with smiling reverence the ancient forms of expression.
Here in America is the smelting pot of nations and we are uniting
once more in one race the scattered children of the Aryan stack.
Each child brings as play what was once worship--Saxon, Celtic,
Greek or Latin, all uniting again in the Christmas celebration and
each bringing his fagot for the lighting of the Yule log, which
burns on Christmas Eve.
Nor does it matter to us now from what tree that log is cut,
though once it did. The ancient Aryans who were forefathers of us
all lived very near to nature and all their thought was built upon
her moods. Our Christmas tree with its lighted candles and its
glow of tinsel ornaments is but a tiny image of their sun tree,
which began to grow with the first lengthening of the days. They
imaged in this dawning light a pillar of fire like a tree trunk
that grew and spread over the heavens, bringing through spring all
the beneficient gifts of summer. The rays were twigs, the glowing
clouds foliage, and the sun, moon and stars golden fruit that hung
from these celestial branches. Out of this as the race grew came
also many another romantic symbolism of cherished belief. Among
the glowing sunset clouds was hung the golden fleece of the
Cholchis. The golden apples of the Hesperides grew there. The very
lightning flash was but a celestial mistletoe growing mysteriously
upon the limbs of this flame tree as it grows on the oaks in the
forests beneath which they hunted. Secure in our better beliefs,
we call their worship superstition, but it is well that they had
it. It was the groping expression of imagination without which we
are no better than the beasts and would never find the really
spiritual for which we still seek.
The most perfect descendant of this sun tree was the world-ash of
the Scandinavian mythology, the "Yggsdrasil" of the Edda, in which
it is described, with the many mystic rites which grew up about
its worship. Hence in Western Europe the proper Yule log was the
trunk of an ash tree bound with as many green hazel withes as
possible, the hazel being also a sacred tree with these people. As
late as thirty years ago, and I doubt not still, the Yule log was
thus put to burn on Christmas Eve in many an English fireplace.
There some part of it was to be kept smouldering, however low the
fire might get, and the blaze of the next day was to be relighted
from it for the twelve days of Christmas. Moreover, from a portion
of this log should be relighted the Yule fire of the next year,
that its magic might be perpetual and thus all evil spirits be
warded from the house. Not a bad superstition this, the brand
standing as a constant reminder of the spirit of peace and good
will lighted in the Christmas fire, not to be forgotten till it is
kindled anew by the relighting of the blaze on the hearth a year
hence. Here in New England we come, little by little, back to
these kindly old customs that mean so much when the outward
observance is informed with the thought which it represents. The
old fireplaces which were once ignominiously built up with bricks
to give free draft to the air-tight stove in its hollow
materialism are being reopened, and in them again we light our
Yule fires. Nor is the spirit banished with the season. The blaze
from the burning log on the open hearth is the kindliest welcome
that a room can give to him who enters it. In it the rough rind of
our puritanism burns away and the glow within shines forth as we
sit about this primal altar of our race, fire-worshipping.
It was the olden custom for host and guests to watch the first
burning of this ashen fagot, and as the hazel withes one by one
burned away the severing of the bond was the signal for the
passing of the flagon, the loosing of the genial hospitality pent
within the breasts of all and set free with the flames. Perhaps
many who took part in these rollicking ceremonials thought they
cared merely for the cakes and ale, but even they were self
deceived. It was the genial freeing of the spirit of Christmas
good-will to all, the fellowship that touched deepest, though they
may not have formulated the fact even in their thoughts. No wonder
that the children, whose clear sight is unblurred by too much
learning of things which are not so, knew that to this fond fire
on Christmas eve must come that patron saint of gifts, Santa
Claus, even though, the house being locked, he must climb down the
wide chimney to reach it. We have forgotten the shoe, which in the
folk tales of our earliest forbears of the North European forests
was the symbol of mutually helpful deeds of love. The children of
these days placed it by the Yule fire, that Santa Claus might load
it with gifts. Nowadays we hang the stocking in its stead, perhaps
because it holds more.
*****
I do not take it kindly of old Ben Franklin that he, almost an
hundred years ago, with his Poor Richard wisdom taught us to
economize our fuel by shutting up our fire in stoves, for what we
gained in the flesh we lost in the spirit, and it is good that in
the modern house, however mechanically complicated the heating
apparatus, we build fireplaces once again that our souls may be
warmed with the sight of the flame. The impulse to worship fire
still lingers within us and though we have better creeds than that
of Zoroaster and truer spiritual ideals than the Parsees we can
have no more appealing symbol of the purely spiritual than flame.
Phlogiston might well be another word for soul and we are unkind
to the old philosophers to take them too literally. The alchemists
were dreamers rather than doers after all, and though it is the
fashion to laud the doers it is often the dreamers that see most
clearly. As the flame leapt upward from the burning wood they saw
in it a rare, pure, ethereal substance which they called
Phlogiston.
Nor did they yield their theory when Lavoisier claimed to disprove
it by burning phosphorus in oxygen and weighing the result, which
was heavier than the phosphorus had been. Thereupon the world
derided the alchemists and lauded Lavoisier whose experiments laid
the foundation for the intricate science of modern chemistry. For
all that, science gives us the truth only from one angle and the
science of one age is often disproved by the science of the next.
Modern chemists may agree on what happens when phosphorus burns,
but many a theory of Lavoisier's day has been disproved in its
turn. A thousand scientists have declared flying impossible to
man, yet today men fly. Lavoisier was right, no doubt. Combustion
is the combination of an element with oxygen. He proved that with
his chemist's balance. Yet how did he prove that some imponderable
element does not leap from wood in flame? As well say that when a
man dies the spirit has not left the body because he weighs the
same. Watching the falling embers of the Yule log leap into flames
before they turn gray, I am apt to think that the intuition of the
alchemists touched a truth that the chemical apparatus missed. You
cannot measure its reaction on the mind of man or weigh the
results, but they are there.
*****
Wood was the sole fuel of the New England pioneers for two
centuries. In fact in many a remote farmhouse it is today, and the
fathers soon found by use which kind lighted quickest and which
burned longest and with the most steady heat, facts which the
subtle analysis of the chemists only confirmed. The conifers light
most readily and burn rapidly with the greatest heat in a given
time. The hard woods burn longest, some of them retaining fire for
a surprising length of time under just the right conditions. The
woodsmen will tell you that the pines light easily and burn
fiercely because of the pitch they contain. This is true but the
chemists have added another reason. Pine gives off much hydrogen
when heated and this light and inflammable gas gives much flame.
Even in pine wood which does not seem resinous to the touch there
is much of this volatile inflammable material and a good store of
pine kindlings is a first requisite in every well ordered country
household. Of the hard woods hickory is easily king as a fire
holder. Yet the oaks, white and red, and the sugar and black
maples are not far behind in value. Our American white ash and elm
rank well up with the oaks, so does beech, while the softer woods
fall behind. Moreover, trees grown on high, droughty, barren soil
show greater heating power than those of the same variety which
happen to stand in rich, but moister soil.
Long ago an American chemist confirmed what the practical
experience of the woodman had already decided. Marcus Bull's table
of the heating value of American woods is as follows: Shagbark
hickory, 100; white oak, 81; red oak, 68; sugar maple, 60; red
maple, 54; white ash, 77; chestnut, 52; white beech, 65; black
birch, 63; white birch, 48; pitch pine, 43; white pine, 42.
Wood, according to the chemists, is a carbohydrate and the greater
the proportion of carbon which it contains the greater is its
heat-giving value, the greater the proportion of hydrogen the
greater the output of ruddy flames. Yet chemists, who are so sure
the alchemists had no ground for their beliefs, do not always
agree among themselves. Professor Bull's table of the heat-giving
properties of the various woods has been declared inaccurate by
other chemists, in spite of the fact that experience in actual use
bears it out in many particulars. Again, either the chemists of
Europe are at variance with ours or else their trees are, for
Gottlieb's table of the heat-giving properties of European trees
of similar varieties turns ours upside down. Gottlieb's table of
calorics puts oak at the bottom of the list and pine at the top.
It is as follows: Oak, 46.20; ash, 47.11; elm, 47.28; beech,
47.74; birch, 47.71; fir, 50-35; pine, 50.85.
There is a certain interest in all this, but to him who lights the
Yule log on Christmas Eve it probably matters little. He knows
that pine will kindle his fire readily and that one of the hard
woods will hold it longest. He knows that out of the leaping
flames, whether they be composed of phlogiston or incandescent
hydrogen, loved fancies flashed into the minds of the elder race,
born of the flicker of flame on the imagination of a primitive
people, backed by dark forests, night and wind-riding storms. If
he have the hardihood let him light his Yule log in the winter
twilight of the snowy woods. He will do well to pick a spot where
a dense growth of pines shelters him from the wind and a steep
ledge makes for him fireplace and chimney at once. Then it does
not matter if the snow is deep on the ground and the air filled
with flying flakes; his hearth may soon glow with comfort. Even
from a materialistic point of view the ancients did well to
worship fire. Out of it was to come more or less directly all the
material progress of the race toward civilization.
*****
The pines, whose presence in the woods is always a benediction,
stand ready with the best fire kindling in the world. Their twigs
light at the flare of a match. The larger limbs will fire from
these and send flames leaping high. On a fire well started thus
between backlog and forestick he may pile such dry, hard wood as
he has at hand. The forest will give him plenty if he is on
friendly terms with it. The forest will give him more, too. Out of
its mysterious darkness will slip easily into his mind the old-time
loved and half-forgotten legends that grew out of the winter
night in the twilight of the early days of the Aryan race. At the
time of the winter solstice it was the custom of the gods to leave
their dwellings in heaven and come down to earth. In the shout of
the wind in the pines he may well hear Wotan riding overhead in
his gray cloak and broad-brimmed hat pressed low over his face.
He may glimpse his white steed whirling by and see plainly in the
upflaring light of his fire the army of white souls that scurries
behind the winter-god as he rides on his way. Black eagles fly
with him and the wolves of the air gallop on before. The world-ash
was a gigantic evergreen in whose branches were the abodes of
giants and dwarfs as well as men and gods. Screened by night
within the forest this tree may well be near with the springs of
being and non-being within its roots and the Nornen sitting by,
silent and grave. He may catch the gleam of the eyes of Loki as
the firelight glints on the frost crystals among the snow-laden
branches. Thus easily does a thousand years of civilization slip
from us when face to face with night and the forest.
Yet if night and the winter ghosts of old ride just beyond the
circle of his firelight, within it he is in the magic ring of
comfort and safety. Around the Yule logs of centuries the race has
warmed its heart as well as its hands, its soul as well as its
body, and the old gods of terror have become the saints of good
will. Out of the winter night Wotan steps into the light of the
Yule fire, transformed into St. Nicholas, the very spirit of
genial generosity. If we will go from our forest vigil to the
hearth in any home we will find the world-ash, no longer weird and
awesome with the fates sitting silent at its foot, but transformed
into the very symbol of light and happiness and cheer, the
Christmas tree. In the light of twenty centuries around the Yule
log we have forgotten to be afraid and have made out of our weird
dreams friendly fancies. Where once the fearsome dragon twined
about the sun-tree we simulate his folds with strings of pop-corn.
The unquenchable lights that flamed upon its twigs are now
twinkling candles. The sun, moon and stars that once were the
symbolic fruit grow again in tinsel ornament and, where we follow
the legend closely, Eikthyner the stag, Heidrun the goat, Freyer's
boar and Wotan's ravens and wolves, are hung in tiny effigy as
confectioner's sweets. Thus with the Christmas tree alight and
with the Yule log on the hearth we symbolize the old worship of
the sun-tree and of fire through which we have grown to the better
faith of which Christmas is one great commemorative festival.
THE END