Review: Pagan Portals - Have a Cool Yule

Are you starting to think about making plans for the festive season? If so, I recommend reading Pagan Portals - Have a Cool Yule, by traditional witch Mélusine Draco. Its subtitle is How-To Survive (and Enjoy) the Mid-Winter Festival and it is about why we should look upon Yule as one of the most important festivals in the pagan calendar.

Publisher Moon Books says about Have a Cool Yule:

For the entire Pagan community Christmas should be one of the most sacred times of the year, but the lack of any formal written liturgy has consigned the festival to a minor observance in the Pagan calendar. Have a Cool Yule demonstrates that history proves the festival to be a wholly Pagan event, worthy of being acknowledged as one of the Great Festivals along with Beltaine and Samhain. With all the different strands of Pagan custom brought to the hearth-fire of the Mid-Winter Festival, we all have something to celebrate in time-honoured fashion, whether our ancestors are Briton, Celt, Norse or Anglo-Saxon.

I had the joy of reading the book before it went to press and I gave it this endorsement:

Have a Cool Yule is a lovely guide on how to truly enjoy the festive season in the depths of winter, whether you call it Christmas, the Winter Solstice, Yule or any other name. In the pages of this book you will find time-honoured traditions, recipes and sensible advice on how to avoid the worst of the commercialism and make the occasion what you want it to be.

You can view Have a Cool Yule on Amazon. It is officially launched on November 24 - the same day as the Moon Books' community book I edited - Every Day Magic - A Pagan Book of Days. Go on, treat yourself, or give these books to your pagan friends as Yuletide gifts.

Mélusine's earlier books include Secret People - The Parish-pump witchcraft, Wise-women and Cunning Ways; Traditional Witchcraft for Urban Living and By Spellbook and Candle.