05 January 2005

Twelfth Night

"On the twelfth day of Christmas
"My true love gave to me...
"...twelve drummers drumming
"eleven pipers piping
"ten lords a'leaping
"nine ladies dancing
"eight maids a'milking
"seven swans a'swimming
"six geese a'laying
"five gold rings
"four calling birds
"three French hens
"two turtledoves
"and a partridge in a pear tree."
Or maybe not.

There are two schools of thought about how to count the days between Christmas and Epiphany. One school says that Christmas is the First Day of Christmas, which makes January 5 Twelfth Night, with Epiphany as a separate day.

The other school says that Christmastide is for merrymaking and that Christmas is a holy day and should not be included. So Boxing Day/St. Stephen's Day would be the First Day of Christmas, leaving January 6 as Twelfth Night. (This is talked about below in the link from Woodland School.)

Either way it means Christmastide is just about over. Time for the tree and the ornaments and the garland and the tinsel to start wending its way into storage for another year. (Yes, time for good old-fashioned post-Christmas depression.)

In England today one of the features of the celebration is a Christmas cake, a fruity, spicy concoction with white icing. Earlier tradition has the cake for Twelfth Night, which was an evening of merrymaking. An uncooked bean would be included in the cake and the person whose slice it was in became the leader of the festivities for the evening, deciding which games would be played. (Sometimes a raw pea was included, and the man with the bean became the king and the woman with the pea became the queen.) In some places little charms were baked into the cake for fortune-telling purposes. A ring meant you were to be married, a thimble meant a woman would remain a spinster, etc.

Traditional British Twelfth Night cake

Colonial Williamsburg Twelfth cake recipe

School of the Seasons' Twelfth Night page

Woodland Junior School's Twelfth Night page

This last is a great site, produced by a British school, about British customs. Here's the main link.

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