{"id":11944,"date":"2020-12-14T13:57:25","date_gmt":"2020-12-14T20:57:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11944"},"modified":"2022-12-13T15:59:20","modified_gmt":"2022-12-13T22:59:20","slug":"revisiting-a-colorado-yule-log-hunt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11944","title":{"rendered":"Revisiting a Colorado Yule Log Hunt"},"content":{"rendered":"

The little southern Colorado town of Beulah has a traditional Yule log hunt that is almost as old as Wicca \u2014 it began in 1952.<\/p>\n

M. and I attended with a friend and her young son in 2015, and I wrote a blog post about it, “Invoking the Birds and Hunting in the Woods at Yule,<\/a>” with lots of photos.<\/p>\n

Then I chanced across another set of older pix on Facebook at the Beulah Historical Society’s page.<\/a> Here is one from 1954 and one from 1977. Those “huntsmen” from 1977 look like they are ready to get back to their moonshine stills, but I think a couple of them worked at the steel mill down in Pueblo, a city that is a sort of mash-up of Pittsburgh and Albuqueque, although much smaller than either of those. One’s surname is either Slovenian or Czech; I had a co-worker who might have been his relative.<\/p>\n

\"\"

The 1954 Yule Log (Beulah Historical Society)<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"

The “huntsmen” of 1977 \u2014\u00a0they direct the Yule log hunt (Beulah Historical Society).<\/p><\/div>\n

When I watch the hunt, I think of something that the English folkorist E. C. Cawte<\/a> wrote back in the 1970s. He was directing a group of schoolboys in performing a “souling play,” a traditonal entertainment from the winter in which St. George slays someone<\/a> \u2014 who does not stay slain.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Huntsmen of 2015.<\/p><\/div>\n

“The boys found the play much easier to learn and perform than others they were given . . . and the Wild Horse seemed to know, without rehearsal, exactly what he was supposed to do.”((E. C. Cawte, Ritual Animal<\/em> Disguise<\/em><\/a> (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1978), 224.))<\/p>\n

The kids in Beulah know it too.<\/p>\n

This year, of course, everything fun has been cancelled, but up in Beulah, they are planning for 2021. Covid-19 should not last as long as Oliver Cromwell.<\/p>\n

Original Beulah Yule log blog post and photos here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The little southern Colorado town of Beulah has a traditional Yule log hunt that is almost as old as Wicca \u2014 it began in 1952. M. and I attended with a friend and her young son in 2015, and I wrote a blog post about it, “Invoking the Birds and Hunting in the Woods at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[23,127,37,296,84,43],"class_list":["post-11944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-colorado","tag-festivals","tag-folklore","tag-pagan-ish","tag-winter","tag-yule"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-36E","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13134,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13134","url_meta":{"origin":11944,"position":0},"title":"Back for the Yule Log \u2014\u00a0Now with Goats!","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 14, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"After two years' hiatus, the Yule Log was hunted again last Sunday in Beulah, Colorado, a small town in the foothills of the Wet Mountains. This hunt is a twentieth-century revival, passed (along with log splinters) from Lake Placid, New York to Palmer Lake, Colorado to Beulah, where the tradition\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/huntsman-and-companions.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7644,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7644","url_meta":{"origin":11944,"position":1},"title":"Invoking the Birds and Hunting in the Woods at Yule","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 13, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"We Pagans may think that we \"own\" Hallowe'en, but we are own some ground at Christmas time \u2014 or Yuletide, if you prefer. Today M. and I drove 15 miles over twisty mountain gravel roads to a little town that celebrates a Yule log hunt. This tradition dates to 1952,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"Built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps, the lodge invokes both Heorot and a parish church.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/inside-lodge.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12189,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12189","url_meta":{"origin":11944,"position":2},"title":"This Sounds like a Druidic Homily","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 13, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"I was reading the online version of the Pueblo (Colorado) Chieftain this afternoon and happened onto this article provided by the Pueblo Nature and Wildlife Discovery Center, formerly known more prosaically as Pueblo Mountain Park: \"Nature's Classroom: Imbolg, Time of Germination.\" The park has a long and interesting history. I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/lilac-bud-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11971,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11971","url_meta":{"origin":11944,"position":3},"title":"The Return of the Sun in the Hardscrabble","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 21, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Good Yule to all! (\"When is breakfast?\" asks Fisher the dog. \"Why are we hanging around up here?\" \u00a0","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1100,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1100","url_meta":{"origin":11944,"position":4},"title":"Yule and its Songs","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 19, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The Northern Hemisphere winter solstice occurs at 12:04 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time on December 21. That's 5:04 a.m. here in Colorado, perfect for the people drumming up the Sun at Red Rocks Amphitheatre. (I won't be there--too far away.) Remember to visit Archaeoastronomy.com for all your calendrical ritual-timing needs.You can\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"music\"","block_context":{"text":"music","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=music"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7711,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7711","url_meta":{"origin":11944,"position":5},"title":"The Eagles of Candlemas","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 2, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Paganism is not the religion of the polis, but the polis (loosely defined) can support your Paganism. For the last two days, my Facebook feed has been filling up with people posting electronic clip art to the theme of \"Happy Bridget \/ Imbolc \/ Candlemas.\" Me, I spent three hours\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"birds\"","block_context":{"text":"birds","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=birds"},"img":{"alt_text":"pueblo eagle days","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/pueblo-eagle-days.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11944"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13137,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11944\/revisions\/13137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}