Originally, no doubt, the time of the feast was determined by the actual closing of the war-ways and the pastures. Just as the first violet or some migratory bird of March was hailed for the herald of summer, so the first fall of snow gave the signal that winter was at hand[794]. In the continental home of the Germano-Keltic tribes amongst the forests of central Europe this would take place with some regularity about the middle of November[795]. A fixed date for the feast could only arise when, at some undefined time, the first calendar, the ‘three-score-day-tide’ calendar of unknown origin, was introduced[796]. Probably it was thenceforward held regularly upon a day corresponding to either November the 11th or the 12th in our reckoning. If it is accurately represented by St. Martin’s day, it was the 11th[797], if by the Manx _Samhain_, the 12th[798]. It continued to begin the year, and also the first of the six tides into which that year was divided. As good fortune will have it, the name of that tide is preserved to us in the Gothic term _Iiuleis_ for November and December[799], in the Anglo-Saxon _Giuli_ or _Geola_ which, according to Bede, applied both to December and to January[800], and in _Yule_, the popular designation, both in England and Scandinavia, of Christmas itself[801]. The meaning of this name is, however, more doubtful. The older philology, with solstices running in its brain, supposed that it applied primarily to a mid-winter feast, and connected it with the Anglo-Saxon _hwéol_, a wheel[802]. Bede himself, learned in Roman lore, seems to hint at such an explanation[803]. The current modern explanation derives the word from a supposed Germanic _jehwela_, equivalent to the Latin _ioculus_[804]. It would thus mean simply a ‘feast’ or ‘rejoicing,’ and some support seems to be lent to this derivation by the occasional use of the English ‘_yule_’ and the Keltic _gwyl_ to denote feasts other than that of winter[805]. Other good authorities, however, prefer to trace it to a Germanic root _jeula_-from which is derived the Old Norse _él_, ‘a snowstorm’; and this also, so far as its application to the feast and tide of winter is concerned, seems plausible enough[806]. It is possible that to the winter feast originally belonged the term applied by Bede to December 24 of _Modranicht_ or _Modraneht_[807]. It would be tempting to interpret this as ‘the night which gives birth to the year’; but philologists say that it can only mean ‘night of mothers,’ and we must therefore explain it as due to some cult of the _Matres_ or triad of mother-goddesses, which took place at the feast[808].