12 Days Of Yule?

You're looking at 3 different religions - Mother's Night is a Heathen holiday, Solistice is neo-pagan and Wiccan, and while Yule is also Heathen, the day 12 you're looking at is probably the Anglicanized Western European idea.

Traditional Yule is 12 days beginning with the new moon closest to the solstice (Mother's Night), but has nothing to do with the solstice itself. This is the way it was originally practiced in Europe by the original Heathens. It can occur anywhere from late November through January, just depends on where the cycle is. The last night is 12th night, the entire thing is called Yule. There is a LOT of misinformation out there - Wikipedia is vandalized constantly, intentionally or not, by people changing what's there to match the neo-pagan idea of Yule, which has zero to do with traditional Yule.

Neo-pagan Yule is the solstice, and the 12 days vary by who is inventing the ritual.

http://heidilore.wordpress.com/2009/12/10/12-days-of-yule/

http://www.paganspath.com/magik/yule-history.htm

 

I'll see what I can find. At this point, most of my resources are hard-copy books, and some of the better websites have disappeared over the years. Crafty's links have good info on the neo-pagan version, which revolves around the solistice and not the new moon.

This one is Theodish, which is not traditional Norse Heathenry, but Anglo-Saxon.  The names of some things are different, but the basic foundation is the same:

http://www.axenthof.org/calendar.html

The article references Bede, which is a good source in addition to the Eddas for pinning down the mechanics of holidays and calendars and the like. But, with the caviat that he was not a follower, but a scholar viewing the history through a Christian lens.

Generally speaking, if you find a page discussing Yule and it in any way refers to Solstice, Sabbat or "blessings", it's not discussing traditional Yule, but rather neo-pagan Yule.  Some Kindreds have modernized it to coincide with the Solstice for the sake of convenience, but the Solstice itself has nothing to do with the holiday.