Yule

Yuletide is the period around the winter solstice when the Germanic peoples practiced their winter festival with animal sacrifices--blood for the gods and goddesses, sprinkled with twigs used as aspergilla around the idols and on the temple walls, and boiled meats for the humans--and copious amounts of ale, with its most sacred moment over the night from 24 to 25 December, on what the Catholic Encyclopedia refers to as "the extraordinary and obscene Modranicht", the feast of the Divine Mothers, a triple-goddess cult of Gaul and Germania.

Picture, along with most of the information, from Wikipedia. Hey, it's a holiday!

Below the fold, some musical propositions:

 Nothing specifically Yulish about these numbers (to say nothing of Hanukkah, Xmas, or Kwanzaa), except to the extent that, just as the food of the season is always exceptionally dense and rich, so should the music be, and at the same time absolutely, boringly familiar--comfort food with truffles, if you know what I mean, so that the only surprise is that it isn't boring at all.

This is just a great band. I love how video of Ella at this period always shows the members of the band watching her in awe and adoration.