The Twelve Days of Christmas ornament
December 10, 2007 by Cyndi Lavin
Filed under Home & Living
Rings & Things is offering a pdf tutorial on making an adorable ornament for your tree or wreath, featuring charms for the Twelve Days of Christmas. If you don’t have time to make this before Christmas gets here, don’t dismay…I think that the Twelve Days of Christmas actually come after the holiday, don’t they? And anyway, you’ll have it for next year!
December 25th is the first day of Christmas–the last being January 6th the traditional Three King’s Day.
Thank you Lizbeth! That’s what I thought, that the count down started on Christmas day itself, but I was never sure
Hi! Afraid I have to differ. The old custom of determining ‘days’ was that they started at sundown and continued to the following sundown, when a new day began. This is still the ways Jews determine days, especially the Sabbath, which begins at sundown Friday and goes to sundown Saturday.
Under this system, Christmas Day starts on Christmas Eve, which is the evening of Christmas, not before Christmas, and which is part of why some families open their gifts on the Eve. (The fact that your kids don’t then wake you up at 4:30 a.m. is a side-benefit.) In many northern countries, a church service in the late afternoon (when the sun is setting), is followed by a dinner and opening the presents. Christmas Day is almost anti-climactic. Many in Catholic countries attend a late evening Mass, sometimes as late as midnight, when traditionally Jesus is born, again followed by dinner and presents.
Also under this system, the First Day of Christmas starts on the eve of the 25th. Christmas Day itself is not one of the twelve days. Twelfth Night, however, is the eve of Epiphany. Before the arrival of the Three Kings and the revelation of Christ as the saviour to even the Gentiles, which was celebrated in a very solemn manner, the feast of Twelfth Night itself was an occasion of great revelry and social inversion, a ‘feast of fools’: a scullery boy might be appointed ‘ruler’ in a monastery, whom even the abbot had to obey; a lowly commoner would be crowned ‘king’ and all the rest, aristocrats included, were supposed to do as he bid. For an evening everything is turned upside down so that everything may return to the ‘natural’ order on Epiphany, Jan. 6, with the revelation of the the real King of Kings.
I realize that there is a fair amount of confusion on this matter. What I’m presenting is how it was originally; however, I’m sure many people now see as you do!
Oh! That’s *way* more complicated than I originally thought, but it makes perfect sense based upon the changing light conditions and everything else. Thanks so much for the explanation. I just love learning new stuff!
I’m so glad you clarified that, Lea! Eve-to-Eve makes more sense.
Glad you’re so happy about my ‘differing’, LOL! I usually get more flak than anything else.
I’ve come across a lot of posts, often even from clergy, who don’t really understand the eve-to-eve basis, but the more scholarly sources are quite clear on this issue. I also later found that the Oxford English Dictionary agreed with me–or rather I turned out to be agreeing with them, I suppose–and that’s a source that reflects traditional usage quite accurately. I also found a comment somewhere else that said the liturgical day, even in Christian churches, was from eve-to-eve. I hadn’t known that and will try to check it out further.
LOL! If I hadn’t wanted to know the right answer, I wouldn’t have posed it as a question
No flak here…just thanks!