Image assembled by Trollkatt from finds on the 'net.
Trollkatt's julekalender
2 - The jul star
This is - of course - something we heathens have "stolen" from the Christians, if not quite the same way the Christians "stole" our long-established midwinter holidays.
The custom of hanging a star in the window on the 1st Sunday of Advent comes from Germany, as so many other secular Christmas and midwinter traditions do. It originated with the Herrnhutists (the Moravian Church), one of the oldest protestant denominations in the world in 1821.
In Scandinavia it is documented from the end of the 19th century. It began spreading seriously in the 1930s, as more and more homes got electricity, and by the 1950s it had become so common it was to be found in nearly every home.
Nowadays they come in all kinds of materials, but the first ones were made of cardboard, had seven points and were reddish-orange in colour. They could be folded almost like a paper fan for easier storing, as they could be big. Forty to sixty cm in diametre is common, but you can easily find some that are twice as big.
Since our gang of feral cats sleep and are fed on the outdoor sills, I need to open the windows several times a day, so we don't have a jul star to hang up tomorrow. Windows that open inwards make hanging certain kinds of stuff in them pretty impractical.
Here is an old Norwegian classic called "Polarstjernen", that is, the Stella Polaris, after the North Star that I spoke a bit about yesterday, and which is so important in Scandinavian folk tradition. That is the folded star you see to the right. On the bag to the left it says it is 50cm in diametre when folded out, and that it has seven points.
