A Yule log to bring light

Many of Britain’s favourite Christmas traditions, from burning a yule log to kissing under the mistletoe, date back to ancient history

- SIR JOHNNY SCOTT

In the hall of the rambling Elizabethan farmhouse of my childhood was a wide, inglenook fireplace. Every Christmas Eve, the gardener dragged in an enormous Yule log, balancing it with much heaving and grunting across the fire dogs. This would be lit by the remaining piece of the previous year’s log and the fire had to burn for the 12 days of Christmas. A roaring log fire when outside all is in the grip of bleak mid-winter and the wind thunders in the chimney is as much a part of Christmas Eve as the tree, the decorations and the holly, ivy and mistletoe. And as with so many of our Christmas traditions, its origins predate Christianity by at least a millennium.