Annual Feasts Of The SS Family — The Yearly Cycle
Since time immemorial our forefathers worshipped the Sun as giver of life and warmth. Like a golden disk it shone above them, like a wheel it rolled across the sky.
The Sun determines the passing of every day, and its path is itself a circle. It draws longer and shorter lines around the Earth. At 6 a.m. we can see it in the East, at 12 noon in the South, at 6 p.m. in the West, and at midnight, during the summer, in the far North, where it ends its daily cycle.
Furthermore our ancestors saw the passing of the whole year as points on a wheel. That was the old wheel calendar, which could be seen on the horizon.
During the Winter Solstice the Sun appears in the Arctic North for a short time on the southern point; during Midsummer Day it is on the northern point. The connection of these points gives the North-South line of the horizon. In our latitudes the Sun rises on the Midsummer and Midwinter Days in the Northeast and the Southeast, and then sets in the Northwest and Southwest. The connecting lines of these points form an X: divide the already divided circle into 6 parts (the Malkreuz — marked cross), and from there follows the age old sign of the wheel:
The Jul Wheel – The Jul Wheel or Sun Wheel with its deep rooted Germanic religious meaning is utilised as the base for the SS tree.
then remove the outer Circle and you have the Hagall Rune:
From the far North our ancestors brought with them a foundational experience which became very important for their future and especially for us as we rediscover our heritage. It was as follows:
In the high North, Summer and Winter fought each other as the forces of light and darkness. The dark Winter with its harshness and cold seemed to win over the short, barren Summer. And yet Summer arrived year after year despite the might of the Winter. If its arrival every year hadn’t been a certainty, it would have meant the death of the Nordic Folk. Sad and depressed the Nordic Folk watched the circle of the Sun get smaller and smaller at the end of the Summer. The Sun became weak, old, pale. Its path got shorter, and during Jul time there would only be a few hours of daylight and then it would sink into the cold North Sea and was gobbled up, as if eaten by a monster on Midwinter Day. It was dead and lay in its grave. The question whether the Sun would stay buried was of equal importance to the question whether mankind would live or die.
On Midwinter Day the miracle happened: The Sun rose from its watery grave. It was born like a child, gathered strength, and appeared in front of the celebrating and joyous Folk, who felt that life was given back to them. This happened every year. And every year they celebrated this as their most important festival, their sacred and holy night festival. They greeted the Sun with lit torches to help free it from the ties of the death of Winter. And they celebrated as often as possible the ever increasing circles of the Sun. Fires would burn high on the day of spring on which day and night were of same length, as surely the Sun must have finally won the battle now. And again on Midsummer Night, when the Sun had won its greatest victory and night lasted for only a few hours. This celebration eventually became the most important one of all.
The strong Sun made harvest possible, reason for another feast, after which its strength waned fast and it headed once more towards death, which in turn became new life.
As far back as during the Nordic and Germanic times of the German Folk, people told the tale of the death and resurrection of the Sun in many different tales. We are fortunate to know more about this early culture of our Folk than of some periods much later on in our history. This Sun experience is the subject of nearly all of our prechristian fairytales, which the brothers Grimm have collected, written down more than a hundred years ago and thereby preserved for all time. The Sunlike princess, killed by a bad, wintry force, resurrected by a young hero: that is the essence of all these stories, which were wonderfully extended and varied.
Man also saw the same laws of Die and become new all around him in Nature. The yearly cycle of the Sun also determines the rhythm of all living things, animals as well as plants. Their whole life revolved around youth and ageing, dying and rebirth. And man’s own life followed this rhythm. The Nordic man knew that his own life came from the loins of a man destined to die. In the knowledge of his own death he handed on life. That was the essence of his beliefs. What he learned from the Sun he saw in his own forests. That’s why he considered trees to be sacred. He imagined that the whole universe was supported by a gigantic tree. This is the old ash tree which is described in the old saga Edda. In its eternity the law of die and become provides constant renewal, eternal rhythm.
Therefore the Nordic man had at his celebrations the fires, the Sun Wheel, and the tree as symbols. In stories we read about the Tree Of Life, which grows on the grave of the mother and protects the young life through its blessings.
Die And Become (Stirb Und Werde)
“Everything goes, everything returns,
Eternally rolls the wheel of life,
Everything dies, everything blooms again.
Eternally rolls the wheel of life.
Everything breaks, everything is mended,
Eternally builds the house of life.
Everyone parts, everyone meets again,
Eternally the cycle of life stays true.” – F. Nietzsche
The Celebration Of Yuletide
When Neblung (November), the month of the dead, has passed, the time of Yuletide is starting, with its knowledge of the rising of the sun from its sleep, of the renewal after the wintry death, of the birth of light from the darkness of the long nights. Although we Germans no longer live in the far North, and although we can alleviate the depressing feelings through light and heating, the old experiences of our ancestors are very strong and vivid in us. We still feel that Yuletide is the greatest celebration of our year. Therefore we make every effort to celebrate it in style with our family.
The Timetable
Firstly you have to look at the whole of this festive time. It used to last from the 6th day of Jul (December), which was Wotan’s Day and is now St. Nikolaus’s Day, to the 6th day of Hornung (January), which was the old Frigga Day and is now Epiphany, with the main celebration at Midwinter Night, the night of 21st of Jul, when all the mountain tops would have been alight with fires.
We have become accustomed to some alterations to this timetable. The preparation time, Advent, now lasts from the first Sunday in Jul to the 24th of Jul. Advent contains 4 Jul Sundays, Wotan’s Day (6th), and the Winter Solstice (21st). The Twelve Sacred Days of the season start with Yuletide Night on Jul 24th and end on Frigga Day on Hornung 6th. These 12 days are filled with special celebrations, especially on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.
The Jul Wreath
On the first Jul Sunday the Jul Wreath is hung up in the living room. Its fir branches fill the house with pre Yuletide smells, its red ribbons awaken the joy for the coming celebrations, and its red candles brighten up the dark winter evenings. The Yuletide Wreath is equivalent to the old Sun Wheel, and as it is made from living greenery it reminds us of the old Tree Of Life. Once we have made these connections we will surely make the right preparations for the festival.
The SS Man should go to his friendly cartwright and ask for a wooden wheel of about 50 to 80 cm diameter. There is bound to be a spare one lying about. He cuts off one side of the hub so the wheel can lie flat. It is then stained dark brown or bright red and so becomes the Jul Wheel of the family, which should be kept on a low table or the family chest in a corner of the living room.
A small, young, forked tree trunk without branches is stuck into the centre of the hub, so we can recreate the Tree Of Life growing from the Sun Wheel which will be used by the SS-family at every celebration during the year.
Instead of the cart wheel you can use a wooden wheel with the dividers inset and decorated with Runic letters. The tree should still be fixed in the centre. The green tree may be replaced every year by the trunk of the Yuletide tree at the end of the season. It is important that the wooden wheel has replaced the meaningless cast iron Christmas tree stand, which has no place in an SS home. The same goes for electric tree lights and the horrible glass decorations for the tree.
We now place red ribbon both ways across the fork of the tree, the ends of which are tied to the Jul Wreath, which now hangs freely about half way up the tree.
The SS Tree – The typical SS Yuletide Tree sits in the center of the family chest; directly behind is a Wedding Plate and on either side is a Jul Plate.
The Jul Wreath is made by binding bundles of small pine twigs around a wooden hoop (a child’s toy hoop is ideal), and fastening 4 red candles on it.
When the SS Woman prepares the table for afternoon coffee on the first Jul Sunday, she decorates it with further twigs of pine and lights the first candle on the Jul Wreath. Every following Sunday an additional candle on the Jul Wreath is lit, thereby the lights grow slowly until there is an explosion of lights on the Yuletide Tree by the time of Winter Solstice, portraying the Winter Solstice fires. It is also customary to light 4 candles on the first Sunday, decreasing every week by 1 candle. This should point to the dying old year, which is reborn in the many candles on the Yuletide Tree even as its last candle dies away.
Wotan’s Day
The old feast of Wotan is on Jul 16th. In olden days the God of our ancestors drove through the air, visited his people, was friendly to them, and left them little presents. He wanted to announce the start of the Winter Solstice season and the coming of the New Year.
The christian church couldn’t suppress these yearly visits of this white bearded, one eyed leader of the good Spirits. So they put one of its assumed saints, St. Nikolaus, in his place.
But in many areas of Germany the Schimmelreiter — Rider On A White Horse, also known as Hruodprecht — Ruprecht — The One Shining With Glory = Wotan, or simply Father Yuletide remained.
The Celebrations in the Life of the SS Family
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