dies natalis Solis Invicti

 Today is the birthday of the sun, to give his Roman name, Sol Invictus (pronounces sol inwictus), the Invincible Sun, the origin of the commercial festival which many of you are today celebrating in ignorance as 'Christmas Day'. Here in the northern hemisphere, the day of the winter solstice falls on either the 21st or 22nd December but nevertheless it has been celebrated on the 25th here in England since Anglo-Saxon times. 

Yule, the Germanic pre-Christian term for 'Christmas', still used today, is also the time which marks the halfway point of winter if we consider that the autumn equinox is that point which marks the beginning of the decline of the sun's powers: we call this 'midwinter'.

According to the Venerable Bede (672/673-735 CE) of Jarrow, in the old, historic county of Durham, the pre-Christian Anglo-Saxons called December and January Yule or Giuli to give it its Old English name. It marked the turning of the year and he discusses this in his de temporum ratione (On the Reckoning of Time). The Anglo-Saxons used a ten month lunar calendar as did the Romans until 46 BCE when Julius Caesar reformed the Roman calendar into a lunar-solar one consisting of twelve months. The observant reader will see traces of the old Roman calendar in the modern English names for the months: September (septem=seven), October (octo=eight), November (novem=nine) and December (decem=ten).

Later, the Anglo-Saxons differentiated between the first half of Yule (December) by calling it Ǣrra-ġēolamōnaþ and the second half, Æfterra-ġēolamōnaþ (January). The Old Norse equivalent of Geōla being Jól. Bede also attested to another feast that was held at this time of the year, Mōdraniht, meaning 'night of the mothers'. From the original Latin:

                            'incipiebant autem annum ab octavo Calendarum Januariarum die, ubi nunc natale Domini celebramus. et ipsam noctem nunc nobis sacrosanctam, tunc gentili vocabulo Modranicht, id est, matrum noctem appellabant: ob causam et suspicamur ceremoniarum, quas in ea pervigiles agebant.''

My translation:

'They began the year from the eighth calends of January, when we celebrate the birth of the Lord. And that same night now sacred to us, they used to call by the pagan name Modranicht,that is, the night of the mothers: for the reason, we suspect, of the ceremonies which they enacted on that night.'

The 'eighth calends of January' equates to the 25th December. The 'mothers' referred to by Bede are likely to have been the very same personages known to us as the disir in Old Norse, the itis in Old High German, the idis in Old Saxon and the Old English ides. The similar etymology for these terms across four old Germanic languages seems to imply a common and ancient Germanic cultural and religious inheritance. Taking the Old Norse term, dis, we find this as a suffix in Vanadis, the dis of the Vanir, an epithet for the goddess, Freyja. This would imply that the mothers, if they are indeed disir are divine or semi-divine entities, possibly ancestrices of the Anglo-Saxons themselves, elevated to a semi-divine status by a people who honoured their distant ancestors to the point of reverence and worship.

 Indeed, there may very well be a connection between the disir and the 'mothers' via the matronae/matres worshipped by the Celto-Germanic peoples of northwest Europe. Stone altars attesting to their worship are to be found in Gaul, the Rhineland and the low countries, particularly in areas occupied by the Romans. The best known of these deities is without a doubt, Nehalennia attested to in 2nd and 3rd century BCE Gallia Belgica (Belgic Gaul), a Romano-Celto-Germanic cultural melting pot. Anyone interested in Nehalennia and similar deities would benefit from obtaining a copy of Nehalennia. Divine Lady of Prosperity, Trade and Safe Crossings by Gunivortus Goos (GardenStone), 2023.

The idisi are referred to in the First Merseburg Charm, written in Old High German and dated to the 9th century. 

                                              Eiris sazun idisi,

                                              sazun hera duoder;
                                              suma hapt heptidun,
                                              suma heri lezidun,
                                              suma clubodun
                                              umbi cuoniouuidi:
                                              insprinc haptbandun,

                                              inuar uigandun (Griffiths, 2003)

Modern English translation (by Giangrosso, 2016)

                                              Once sat women,

                                              They sat here, then there.
                                              Some fastened bonds,
                                              Some impeded an army,
                                              Some unraveled fetters:

                                              Escape the bonds,
                                              flee the enemy!

The idisi are clearly not mortal women when one analyses their activities, which resemble more that of the Nornir, referred to in the Eddas, who decide the fates of men.