Yule is an old word for Christmas. It is not the everyday word — nobody in Taiwan or London says "See you at Yule." You meet it in three places instead. First, in old-fashioned or poetic writing, and in Christmas cards that want to sound warm and traditional. Second, inside fixed phrases: a Yule log is a log burned on the fire at Christmas, and also a chocolate cake shaped like that log. Third, and this is the interesting part, some people today use it on purpose because it is older than Christmas: the winter festival it named was a Germanic and Norse midwinter feast, held before Christianity came north. So people who follow pagan or nature-based traditions celebrate Yule in late December as the turning of the year, not as the birth of Jesus.

That gives the word a slight double life. In a card it feels cosy and old — like saying "merry old Christmas." On a pagan calendar it means something quite specific and different. Both are real. You will also see it as a shout of celebration in old songs and stories, the way people call out at a feast.

In Scandinavia the related word is still the ordinary, living word for Christmas — jul in Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian. English kept it only as a leftover, a word that sounds like a warm fire and a very long time ago.