Yule was the winter solstice celebration of the Germanic pagans still celebrated by Ásatrúar.
It is also one of the eight solar holidays, or sabbats, of Neopaganism.
In modern Neopaganism, Yule is celebrated on the winter solstice: in the northern hemisphere, circa December 21, and in the southern hemisphere, circa June 21.
"Yule" and "Yuletide" are also archaic terms for Christmas, sometimes invoked in songs to provide atmosphere.
Indeed, this is the only meaning of "Yule" accepted by either the full Oxford English Dictionary or the Concise Oxford Dictionary,
and people unfamiliar with ancient pagan traditions will not distinguish between Yule and Christmas.
This usage survives in the term "Yule log"; it may also persist in some Scottish dialects.
Of the contested origin of Jól, one likely connection is to Old Norse hjól, 'wheel,' to identify the moment when the wheel of the year is at its lowpoint, ready to rise again.
Other linguists suggest that the connection is fortuitous, and that Jól has been inherited by Germanic languages from a pre-Indo-European substrate language.
In the Scandinavian Germanic languages, the term Jul covers both Yule and Christmas, and is also occasionally used to denote other holidays in December, e.g., "jødisk jul" or "judisk jul" for Hanukkah.
The word "jul" has also been borrowed into the neighboring Finnic languages, most notably to Finnish and Estonian (where it has been modified to "joulu" and "jõul" , respectively, and denotes Christmas in modern usage), although the Finnic languages have a linguistic origin different from Germanic languages.