Special Edition Convos Behind the Counter: Yule Logs
Our Yule Logs have arrived!!!
In October, nearly half the store traveled to St. Louis for the annual meet-up of booksellers from across the Heartland, and a small contingent carried on to Nashville, which Social Media Manager Rachel said was “so close, we couldn’t not go” (readers, it was a further 5 hours added to the road trip, each way).
But one of the many delights of driving all the way to “Music City” was making our first ever visit to author Ann Patchett’s Parnassus Books, the pinnacle of Indie bookstore perfection. Not only was the store a shopping delight (beautiful curation, including an entire bookcase of signed Ann Patchetts + Ann’s personal recommendations), but the bookselling team was top notch.
When we told them we were booksellers ourselves making a one-day, mad-dash tour of Nashville’s bookstores, they welcomed us into the fold. Bookseller Ashby tracked down Store Manager Andy, who, on a very busy Saturday in their store, spent the most generous amount of time “talking shop” with us – everything from systems for receiving books to preferred boxes for mailing subscriptions books to unusually fast-selling, non-book merchandise.
And what item is it that Parnassus sells so fast they can hardly keep it on the shelves? A microbead, headrest pillow with the shape and appearance of a photorealistic log.
We figured, what the heck, let’s see what the people of Ames think of this perfect reading pillow and ordered a cord of logs for ourselves (just kidding, a cord of wood measures 128 cubic feet of wood, and our 36 pillows stack nicely under the new release table, occupying nowhere near 128 cubic feet).
How exactly do these log-shaped reading pillows fit into our Convos Behind the Counter segment, you ask? When I announced that they would be referred to as “Yule Logs”, given their timely arrival during the winter holiday shopping season, Events Manager Emily remarked: “Isn’t that a dessert?”
You must forgive, Emily. In her defense, she is a delightful baker.
Yes, a Yule Log is a dessert – like a large Little Debbie’s Swiss cake roll, but made to look as though it’s covered in real bark, often adorned with meringue mushrooms or other woodland decorations. But as I told Emily, I suspected that dessert was based on an actual log of some sort.
Jump down the rabbit hole with me, and discover what I learned about Yule logs.
Event Manager Emily, #1 Baker
Pre-Christianization, Germanic peoples celebrated Yule during the winter solstice. Over the ages, the celebration lasted anywhere from three days to two whole months. It was a time of feasting, drinking, and sacrifice (animal), possibly connected to the Norse God Odin, whose name, Jólnir, meant “the Yule one.”
Among the many traditions tied to this period of celebration was that of selecting a “Yule Tree” – a family trekked out into the woods, Clark Griswold-style, chopped down a tree and hauled it back to the house. Stripped of its branches, a portion of the log was burned each night – in some cases, tradition dictated that the whole trunk be laid out in front of the hearth, with the fattest end inserted into the fire and the rest extending out into the room. Tradition also called for saving a bit of the year’s Yule log – either a chunk of log or ashes from the hearth – and storing them under the bed over the course of the year (for good fortune?) then using the remains to light the next year’s Yule fire.
When the winter solstice festivals were overtaken by Christmas, the burning of the Yule log – and the use of the word “Yule” – was one of the pagan traditions that carried over to the Christian holiday.
Now how about the edible Yule log? According to Gastro Obscura (we carry this delightful combination of food history and recipe), the first known Yule log cake recipe was published in 1895 by French pastry Chef Pierre Lacan (though lore has it this cake dates to the 1600’s). City life in France made access to actual giant yule logs difficult, and stoves had begun to replace massive stone hearths. But a delectable, yet realistic-looking, log, allowed the Yule log tradition to continue in a new way. In France, the dessert goes by the name bûche de Noël, but variations of the festive recipe abound today (check out the version in The Snowy Cabin Cookbook!).
As for the original Yule log, a local New York television station first broadcast several hours of a six-minute, full-color loop of a yule log burning in the fireplace of New York City’s mayoral mansion on Dec. 24th, 1966. It became a yearly tradition that was mimicked across the nation, and a burning Yule log is accessible on nearly every cable subscription or streaming service available today.
So whether you load up the fireplace this season, switch on a TV imitation, bake-up a log-shaped dessert, or snuggle up with our Yule log neck pillow, we hope you have a festive and joyful Yuletide.
