Of Saxon festivals none were more celebrated than their _Jule_ or _Yule_ (to which corresponds our Christmas), a strange combination of conviviality and religion. It appears to be a Saxon adaptation of an ancient Celtic festival. The Celts worshipped the sun. At the winter solstice the people testified their joy that the ‘greater light’ had returned to this part of the heavens, by celebrating a festival or sun-feast, which took its name from _Heol_, _Hiaul_, _Houl_, dialectic varieties of the Celtic expression for ‘sun.’ The prefix of the article will account for the Gothic forms _Gehul_, _Juul_, and hence again the softened forms, _Jul_, _Yule_. Upon this heathen festival the Christians engrafted their great festival, the anniversary of the rising of the Sun of Righteousness upon a dark world.[24] Before leaving this subject notice should be taken of the _grafol_, or rent, paid upon lands. It furnishes some incidental details of the social life of our ancestors. Upon a certain estate in Lincolnshire we find that the following yearly rent was reserved:--(1) To the monastery, two tuns of bright ale, two oxen fit for slaughter, two _mittan_, or measures, of Welsh ale,[25] and six hundred loaves. (2) To the abbot’s private estate, one horse, thirty shillings of silver, or half a pound, one night’s pastus, fifteen mittan of bright and five of Welsh ale, fifteen sesters of mild ale. Anglo-Saxon guilds, or social confederations, were associated with drink. Every member was compelled to bring a certain amount of malt or honey. The fines they imposed also imply that the materials of conviviality were not forgotten.