Source: Beliefnet.com
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/137/story_13754_1.html
On December 20, 2003 Beliefnet.com posted a Religion News Service story that reported, "The winter solstice, which marks the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, is a sacred day to Heather Botting, a pagan chaplain at the University of Victoria...On Yule, the university's interfaith chapel typically churns with pagans marking the return of more daylight hours by swirling in a crack-the-whip-like dance, revering stag antlers because they signify the cycle of life, and dipping a ceremonial knife into a cast-iron cauldron of wine to symbolize the unity of male and female divinity...In a rare example of North American pagans moving into the mainstream, Botting and other members of the Aquarian Tabernacle Church won government approval in the late 1990s to legally conduct marriages, after being officially recognized as a religion."