Today is Epiphany – the Twelfth Night … the final day in the Twelve Days of Christmas. Thus does the Solstice season come to an end, and everything returns to normal. It is a time for taking down the decorations (if you haven’t done so already) and restoring the house back to order.
There is an old myth that says that if one does fails to take down the holly on this day, then each of the leaves shall turn into a mischievous goblin, ready to wreck havoc on home and hearth. In the old days where the homes were traditionally decorated in greenery such as holly, ivy, mistletoe, and evergreens; such decor would be consigned to the fire and burned as part of a final farewell.
It’s time to end the festivities, but they would still go out with a bang. This final flare of celebration often would be the brightest, with more feasting, more drinking, and more dancing… as if to say that we really don’t want the party to come to an end, but if end it must the let’s do it up in style! As a commenter during the Victorian Era once said:
Christmas goes out in fine style with Twelfth Night. It is a finish worth of the time. Christmas Day was the morning of the season; New Year’s Day was the noon; Twelfth Night is the night…brilliant with the innumerable plates of Twelfth Night Cakes. The whole island (of Britain) keeps court; nay, all Christendom. All the world are Kings and Queens. Everybody is somebody else; and learns at once to laugh at, and to tolerate, characters different from one’s own by enacting them. Cakes, characters, forfeits, lights, theatres, merry rooms, little holiday-faces, and last but not least, the painted sugar on the cakes – all conspires to throw a giddy splendor over the last night of the season.
We can still celebrate the end of the Yuletide with a last triumph. Traditionally, a cake was baked for this day, and a bean hidden somewhere in the mixture and baked along with it. Whoever received the piece of cake with the bean in it was appointed King or Queen for the night, and thus would reign over the festivities.
This custom of a Twelfth Night King could be viewed as a nod to the Christian commemoration of this day as being when the three kings – better known as the Three Wise Men or the Magi – visited the baby Jesus. Others see this as the day of celebration of Christ’s baptism.
However one chooses to recognize and honor the Twelfth Night, when all is said and done the twelve days are over and now we can begin to look forward to the new year and new beginnings. As we put some things away, and return others to nature that they might be reborn again, let us take a moment to give thanks for all the gifts we have received over this Solstice season, and shall we honor the twelve days throughout the next twelve months.
This sculpture shows the sign for "connect"...and that is what Deaf Pagan Crossroads is all about - making connections. Connections between Deafhood and Paganism, connections between the Deaf Community and the Hearing Community, connections between myself as the writer and you as the reader. I hope you will take the time to read my various posts, some of which are listed below. Welcome to the Crossroads, and I hope you make some connections here!
Just wanted to say that I have just finished reading your Yule series and want to thank you for all the hard work and research that must have gone into this. It is a very easy to read and informative source of information.
I do have one question (or maybe two)… Did the twelve days of Christmas ever start at the Winter Solstice or has it always been the day which became December 25th?
Thank you
Greetings, Rose… and welcome to the Crossroads!
In regards to your question… that’s a very good one for which I don’t have a definitive answer. What I can say is that the concept of the Twelve Days of Christmas began long before the birth of Jesus Christ or the beginning of Christmas. They go way back to the celebration of Saturnalia and Kalends and various ancient Pagan celebrations… some of which lasted for several days. Some of these celebrations may indeed have begun on the Winter Solstice. The truth is that we don’t really have a whole lot of factual information about how and when these ancient festivals were actually celebrated.
If we take into consideration the concept of the Twelve Days of Christmas as being intercalary days, it is interesting to note that these days always seemed to fall around the Winter Solstice. As I explained in an earlier post, the twelve days were never really actual intercalary days; however, they were celebrated as as part of the festival of Christmas.
So to answer your question… I honestly don’t really know. It is very possible that at some point, they did actually begin on the Winter Solstice – but I don’t think such celebrations were in fact called the Twelve Days of Christmas.
We must bear in mind that the Twelve Days of Christmas are a Christian invention, which basically define the twelve days between the birth of Jesus Christ and the visitation of the Magi – the day known as Epiphany. These twelve days were used to honor the twelve apostles, through the lighting of twelve bonfires.
So if we use this definition, then I am inclined to say that no, the Twelve Days of Christmas as perceived by modern Christian definition never began at the Winter Solstice, but always had its beginning at Christmas, celebrated on December 25th.
Hope this helps.
Thanks Ocean. I had never heard of the losing of the days before and the start of the twelve days tradition. The origin of the things we do is always interesting!
[…] not even attempt to put here all of what I have found as there is far too much. The best entry is here. It is part of a Yule series I will now go back and read. I wish I had found it sooner. I suppose […]