From the archives of the New York Times comes an article about the Yule Log from Thomas Vinciguerra.

Like Christmas itself, the Yule log means different things to different people. ”It’s sort of a symbol of loneliness,” said the director Whit Stillman, who depicted a solitary Yule log viewer in a melancholy scene in his 1990 movie ”Metropolitan.” ”It probably wasn’t a great Christmas for you if you were watching it.” But, Mr. Stillman added, ”it’s a great thing to have when you touch bottom socially. No matter how low you go, if you had a TV, you had the Yule log.”