Twelfth Night - Nothing To Do With Shakespeare!

I wonder how many people on your road have already taken their Christmas decorations down.

Many people seem to celebrate Christmas & Boxing Day, then any time after this the decorations are taken down, packed in boxes, put back into the loft and stowed away again until next year! This is rather sad, because they are missing a large part of the Christmas celebrations.

Twelfth Day is the last day of Christmas, so the season of Christmas doesn’t officially end until Twelfth Night, which is the sixth of January (Twelve days after Christmas).

Those of you who can remember the Christmas story will recall that the Wise Men set off from the east to follow a star, and as they didn’t have Sat Nav they had to make do with Star Nav, which is a bit less accurate! Due to this, and not knowing exactly where they were heading they had to stop off and make enquiries, and quite reasonably they thought the best place to look for a King would be in a palace, so they tried the one where King Herod lived.

King Herod had not had an heir born and had to ask his own astrologers, and they put their heads together and consulted their star tables (or scrolls) and came up with the answer that the most likely place to look for this new born King would be Bethlehem, so the Wise Men travelled on still following the star, until it came to rest over a stable at the back of an inn, and there they found the new born baby lying in a manger.

Twelfth Night is the end of the season of Christmas, and the start of the season of the Epiphany – when we remember the Wise Men arriving at the stable in Bethlehem.

The Twelve days of Christmas (sounds like a title of a song) used to all be a time of partying and celebration. There was feasting, singing, dancing, game playing and lots of other activities. There even used to be a Twelfth Night cake, but that has been superseded by Christmas cake nowadays

Twelfth Night Cake

Food and drink is the centre of the celebrations in modern times, and all of the most traditional ones go back many centuries. The punch called wassail is consumed especially on Twelfth Night, but throughout Christmas time, especially in the UK.

Around the world, special pastries, such as the tortell and king cake are baked on Twelfth Night, and eaten the following day for the Feast of the Epiphany celebrations.

In English and French custom, the Twelfth Night Cake was baked to contain a bean and a pea, so that those who received the slices containing them should be designated king and queen of the night's festivities.

In colonial America, a Christmas wreath was always left up on the front door of each home, and when taken down at the end of the Twelve Days of Christmas, any edible portions would be consumed with the other foods of the feast. The same held true in the 1800s - 1900s with fruits adorning Christmas trees. Fresh fruits were hard to come by, and were therefore considered fine and proper gifts and decorations for the tree, wreaths, and home. Again, the tree would be taken down on Twelfth Night, and such fruits, along with nuts and other local produce used, would then be consumed.

In the eastern Alps, a tradition called Berchtenlaufen exists. Two to three hundred masked young men rush about the streets with whips and bells driving out evil spirits. In Nuremberg until 1616, children frightened spirits away by running through the streets and knocking loudly at doors.

In some countries, and in the Catholic religion worldwide, the Twelfth Night and Epiphany marks the start of the Carnival season, which lasts all the way through to Mardi Gras Day.