How To Celebrate Yule Without Reinventing Christmas

The darkest nights ask for the coziest magic. We lean into Yule and the winter solstice with the Nine of Cups as our north star, exploring how to treat yourself with small, meaningful rituals that fit real life. From fairy lights and tea to bookstore wanders and artist dates, we lay out practical, low-cost ways to keep your cup full when the calendar is packed and the sun slips away early.

We also get honest about tarot study. Temperance makes so much more sense when you see it as balance—time, energy, and pacing—rather than an abstract virtue. And yes, swords can sting; naming the cards we dread turns avoidance into understanding and better readings for others. Our coven’s photo challenges reveal shared struggles and wins, making learning feel communal and fun without pressure.

If you’re solstice-curious, here’s the good news: you don’t need to reinvent Christmas to honor Yule. Evergreens, lights, mistletoe, and even nativity scenes can be reimagined as symbols of life returning. Try intention ornaments you’ll burn on New Year’s Eve, snow collected for offerings, or bowls of snow dressed with herbs like a candle—letting the melt release your wish. Keep evening lights flickering until solstice to welcome the sun back and to remind your spirit that cycles turn.

We wrap with simple invitations: a twilight walk to spot winter signs, a shared cup with a witch-curious friend, a handmade or thrifted gift if capacity allows. Joy is a craft you can practice in small, steady ways. If this episode makes your season feel a little lighter, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs cozy magic, and leave a quick review so more listeners can find our coven. How will you treat yourself this week?

Etsy Sale use COZYCOVEN for 30% off listings: https://healwithjenny.etsy.com?coupon=COZYCOVEN

Take my class on Udemy:

https://www.udemy.com/course/attuning-to-the-earth/?couponCode=COZYCOVEN

Chapters

• 0:23 Settling Into Winter Energy
• 1:12 Tarot Focus: Nine Of Cups
• 2:13 Artist Dates And Simple Treats
• 4:41 Collections, Books, And Tools Of The Craft
• 6:42 Promotions And Learning Resources
• 8:26 Coven Photo Challenges And Tarot Lessons
• 11:46 Yule Is Already In Your Christmas

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:12

Hello, Cozy Coven, and welcome to another Cozy Coven Chats. I am your host, Jenny C. Bell, and this is for the week of December 7th. So we're really getting into this uh winter solstice or Yule energy, and the nights are growing much colder and darker where I live. And there's frost, and the leaves are gone, and it's feeling much more like winter than fall. And winter always makes me want to be cozy. I already have the bigger, thicker blankets out, and the fireplace is going and more candles. I just, you know, it gets dark so early, like the fairy lights and the candles to really help kind of offset that. So our tarot for the week is the Nine of Cups, which is treat yourself energy. And I loved that that came up after the Queen of Cups, where we were talking about filling our cup. So now we're talking about treating ourselves, which is really kind of similar energy, um, and doesn't have to be like expensive. Need a little water. Um, you know, it's hard for some of us when we go shopping for Christmas, like especially my son, for us not to be like, oh, I want this. Like, okay, we'll tell somebody, like, you know. So a lot of us don't treat ourselves during this month because we're usually budgeting and treating other people. And so you don't have to treat yourself with something that's expensive. But I talked about last week being home alone and treating myself each day to a little something, and so it could be window shopping, it could be getting out an art gallery. When I read and did the whole artist's way book, like actually applied what was said in that book, which is beautiful and everyone should do it, in my opinion. One of the things you learn is to take your little artist out on a date. And so I committed to a year of Jenny dates. They were usually on a Thursday, and things I liked to do were window shop, go to the local art gallery, take a walk in nature, um, get a cup of tea, uh, go to my favorite used bookstore, go antiquing, go thrifting. Um yeah, those are kind of I'm pretty simple. I'm a simple girl. I'm a raven. I like trinkets. I like books. I like to more of a dragon when it comes to books. I like to hoard books. Um yeah, I'm definitely a maximalist in my decorations. Uh my house is clean and tidy, but I do am a collector and have been since I was a child. And I went through a phase where I did the whole Marie Kondo thing, and I really got rid of a lot of stuff. I sold a lot of stuff and got rid of a lot of stuff, and then we moved and I started accumulating trinkets again. With always a justification that I'll use it for my work, which is true. I use a lot of the books when I write my own books. I use a lot of the trinkets and charm casting, I use all the card decks and readings for our coven. So, yeah. So, how would you treat yourself this week? I'm gonna ask you that at the end as our journal question. But, you know, nine of cups is like these full cups and the person looking pleased, they've done a good job, and now it's like, okay, what's next? I'm gonna treat myself. So, what can you say yes to this week for yourself? I'm gonna let you think about that. Okay, um, nothing major as far as moons going this week. I we are technically, it's up to you. We are technically still in sowing energy, um, but I'm personally feeling solstice energy. As soon as December 1st hits, I'm feeling solstice energy. So I think we're in Yule energy. You know, really up to you. Oh, I still I want to share my little sales. They're still going on. Um, right now on my Etsy shop, Heal with Jenny, you can take 30% off with the promo code CozyCoven, C-O-Z-Y-C-O-V-E-N. Takes 30% off any of the readings, including the Reiki. Um, and my shop is healwithgenny.etsy.com, and you can learn more about it at jennycbell.com also. It's very hard to find people's shops on Etsy unless you know the website. And if you use that same code CozyCoven, you can take my attuning to the earth class on Udemy for only$12.99. It goes over all of the Sabbaths and more. And there's a whole section on Yule with a meditation, there's booklets for every single one of the Sabbaths plus a playlist. Um, it's super fun. Oh, I'm also on Pinterest. If you just search Jenny Stebel on there, you'll find me. Um, and I have boards for all the sabbath as well. So yeah, I think that's really fun. Um, I also want to say that if you are in our coven or thinking about joining our coven, we are doing, we've been doing uh photo challenges. It started in October. Um it was a month-long challenge for Sawin and just doing sowen things. And then in November, we did a week-long, I felt like a week was more doable for people, a week-long challenge on Tarot and Oracle. And that was super fun because we learned um what cards are challenging for one another and they were similar cards, what cards we dread when those were similar cards. Um, one of the challenging cards that came up was Temperance. And I recently I do a reading every month for our coven, and I did the December reading, and in the um midwinter tarot from Llewellyn, it's a Christmas Yule-themed tarot. The temperance card is called Balance, and it's Santa Balancing Time. And I thought that gave a lot of clarity. So if you struggle also understanding, like, what's the meaning of temperance? Remember it is balance, right? Balance. And then the challenging cards were almost all swords. Everybody, me included, I don't like seeing three of swords, especially if I'm doing a like a reading for someone else. Like, ooh, this is a rough one to break for someone. So, yeah, we talked about that, and then we're gonna be doing a photo challenge for Yule. So that'll be coming up uh the week before Yule, and it's all just kind of Yule-inspired photos, and so it's nothing hard. We have a live chat in there, and you can just share, and it doesn't have to be like you don't even have to put an explanation if you don't want to. So we have that going on, and then what I want to talk about in this episode is if this is your first time celebrating Yule or Winter Solstice, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Um, pretty much all of Christmas is Yule and Winter Solstice. Like, you don't have to change anything. The Christmas tree is because druids saw that pine trees didn't lose their leaves and thought that was magical and beautiful and everlasting and proved of everlasting life. And so that's why the tree was sacred and decorated and honored. And so that's where Christmas tree comes from. You can decorate your Christmas tree in a thoughtful way that's like manifesting. You can write a note and put your manifestations and hang them on the tree and then burn them all on New Year's Eve as a way of showing that you believe in the manifestations. You can definitely use most Christmas decorations, even the manger ones, because we can just celebrate life at this time, right? Um, there are some pagan stories of the Oak King and the Holly King that talk about this whole kind of death of the Oak King and birth of the Holly King. The death of the Oak King is around Sawin, and then the birth of the Holly King is around Yule, and it's very much like this story of renewal and the new cycle beginning, and so totally can say that your manger is the Holly King manger, and maybe even add a little Holly to it to kind of prove the point, right? And make it more of that connection. But really, you don't have to change what you do, you know. Mistletoe, um, I like to hang mistletoe on the front door because it's for protection. But you can definitely, it's always connected with sensuality and lovers and you know, just kind of virtuity and virility. And so you can definitely use it as the way people have always used it, which is kissing under the mistletoe. But, you know, it's really it doesn't have to be anything new. And there's if you're getting snow, there's a lot of snow magic. One of the things I like to do with snow, I'm not getting any yet. We usually don't get our if we get snow, we don't get it till after December. I go out and I collect it in jars and put it on my altars as offerings because it's fresh and it's cleansing and it's beautiful. Another thing I like to do is put it in little bowls and sprinkle intention with herbs and spices, much like you would a candle. And as it melts down, it puts energy out instead of burning down. So I like to do that. Um, I like to just watch the snow. I think it's beautiful. We definitely want to invite in more light at this time of year. That is typical of solstice celebrations, is welcoming the sun back with lights. So fairy lights, uh, electric or battery-operated candles and actual candles, right? So personally, I like to have fairy lights or candlelight every night until the solstice. I also have my solstice calendar, my advent calendar where I light the candle every night. Um, you know, kind of similar, I guess, in some ways to Hanukkah actually. Um, but we want that light to come in and to we want to celebrate it returning for lots of reasons. You know, we want we want to remember in these dark, dark nights that the sun will come back. And if you're having shadows rise or you're having worries or concerns, which is human, it reminds you that there are good times too. Cyclical, everything's cyclical. So, yeah, when thinking about Yule and Winter Solstice and how you're gonna celebrate, don't make it one more thing you have to do. Make it something that fits into the schedule, that's enjoyable, that blends in with Christmas. Like I said, you don't have to reinvent the wheel, just let it be something sacred and small for yourself. You know, you see these videos of these cool Yule parties, and I would love to do that someday. But as a mom, that's not happening. All my energy is going to Christmas, right? And anybody can celebrate Yule winter solstice. So if you have friends who are witch curious, you might want to invite them over for a little something or meet them somewhere. Like, hey, on the winter solstice, I would love to take a little walk around the park and look for signs of winter. Do you want to join me and maybe send some intentions? People are are more up to that than we realize a lot of the times. Like people like to do witchy things. If they don't want to be a witch, they still like to do witchy things. So think about that as well as expanding and sharing your what you do with others. You know, this is a great time to start thinking about gifts you want to make if you want to make any. I did tea blends and cordials last year. I did a beard oil last year, so many recipes online. Um this year I'm not so much doing as many homemade gifts. I'm still learning to crochet. One year I would like to be able to crochet some gifts. I'm not there yet. Pretty clumsy still, and that's okay. Um but yeah, I'm I'm I did thrift and secondhand shop a lot of gifts, especially for my husband, but I'm not really making as many this year. Um just mainly because I made a lot last year and I just wasn't feeling that or having people to create it for this year. So, you know, comes in cycles, like I said. Um I think that's it for this episode. I'll probably be keeping some of these wintery ones a little shorter until after Christmas because I've got a lot to do, guys. I'm a mom too. Um, but I do want to leave you with some questions. So, first is what does it mean to treat yourself? Like, what does that mean to you? Two, what does it look like when you treat yourself? And three, how can you treat yourself without spending any money? As always, I hope you have a beautiful week. Bless it be.