The Twelve Days of Christmas

C. A. Asbrey

We are all familiar with the cumulative Christmas carol dating from the eighteenth century, and the gifts that keep being added by the singer’s ‘true love’ right up until Christmas day, but what about the actual twelve days of Christmas?

We all know that the Victorians essentially invented the way we still celebrate this ancient festival, and in part that was due to the Industrial Revolution. Factories and workplaces were not prepared to close for the traditional break celebrated a more agrarian economy. The depth of winter was a quiet time on the farm, and that allowed people to enjoy a long break before the hard work all started up again. Sometimes called Twelvetide, the Twelve Days of Christmas ran from Christmas day right up to Epiphany on the 6th of January. the advent of the Gregorian Calendar, but the Eastern church still works on the Julian Calendar, which means that the Eastern Orthodox Churches and the Eastern Catholics have the same festivals transposed to 7th and 19th January.

William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night captures the merrymaking and continuous feasting that used to take place over the holiday, culminating in a festival where a Lord of Misrule was appointed, and a degree of licensed disorder. The play’s inversion of social standing and gender reflects celebrations many people would have been familiar with at that time. These celebrations are linked to the traditional Christmas pantomimes people in the UK still enjoy. These are generally fairy tales with a humorous twist, and include the main male hero, the principal boy, being played by a woman. A comic turn of a pantomime dame, a man dressed in ridiculous heightened versions of women, is expected in all of them, and is the main comic vehicle in the performance. There’s little or no effort to try to make these characters realistic and the audience plays along with the conceit as part of the fun.

Many of the customs of this extended twelve day feast were passed down from ancient pagan festivals that people were unwilling to give up when Christianity took over. Saturnalia was a winter Roman Feast held in honour of Saturn. Gifts were given over an extended holiday from 17th to 23rd December. Masters served slaves, feasting, drinking, and trickery were widespread, and a general carnival atmosphere prevailed. The gifts were normally gag gifts called sigillaria, often small figurines with exaggerated sexual organs, hunchbacks, gods or mythical figures. These were said to have originally been a substitute for ancient human sacrifices, but became no more than amusing figures given to children to play with. Lucian of Samosata wrote that Saturnalia is the ‘festive season, when ’tis lawful to be drunken, and slaves have license to revile their lords.’     

There were also links to the Germanic festival of Yule, a pagan festival that took place in the months of geola or giuli that correspond to our December or January. Incidentally, the word ‘jolly’ was adopted in to the English language from French in the 14th century, and has it’s roots in the word ‘yule‘, which tell you a lot about the way people thought of the festival. Yule celebrations involved the farmers coming to the temple where sacrifices were made, feasting and drinking took place, and banqueting went on for days. The Yule Pig is still represented in our feast as the Christmas ham. Whether it was called Yule or not, archeologists have found evidence of such feasts, and mass killing of livestock taking place around Stonehenge around the time of the Winter Solstice. We don’t know what they called this gathering, but it makes sense to cut down on livestock at a time when nothing is growing, retaining enough for breeding in the spring. Not only does it save on animal fodder, but it provides much-needed nutrients until you can grow more crops. It’s not hard to see how that down-time in the world of agriculture, a surfeit of meat, and a worry about spring not returning could turn into a religious feast for everyone.  

The Yule Ghost Hunt, where Odin lead a ghostly procession in the winter sky, led to a connection between the period with the supernatural. The Victorians still participated in the older tradition of Christmas ghost stories, and the most famous example is still with us in the form of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.   

In the Yule festival, evergreens were bought into the home to decorate it in a form of sympathetic magic, in the hope that the green would return in the spring. This tradition led to Christmas wreaths, decorations, and, of course, the Christmas tree. The Yule log was an enormous lump of wood, and was burned on each of the twelve nights. For many that then developed into a log-shaped cake. In French-speaking areas this became the Bûche de Noël, and also spread to the US and UK. Christmas Cake developed from the Twelfth Cake, the centrepiece of the table on the last night of the celebrations. There are many versions throughout the world, but Queen Victoria led a fashion for it to be very elaborate. A large dried bean was randomly baked into it, and whoever found it became king or queen for the day.

This is also linked to the tradition of adding charms to Christmas cakes and Christmas puddings, all related to fortune telling. A thimble meant that a woman would remain a spinster, but finding a sixpence was a portent of coming into great wealth. A button was a sign that a man would remain unmarried. The puddings are stirred in a ritual, with every member of the family being required to stir with a wooden spoon from east to west.

Carol singing was not traditionally associated with Christmas, and certainly not with churches. They were fun songs sung by common people in pubs, but they became merged with the Twelfth Night tradition of Wassailing to ensure a good harvest the next year. People gathered in orchards to make offerings to the apple trees. The Wassail Queen was raised to the boughs to deliver toast soaked in punch and to pour cider on the trees. Noises are made to drive away evil spirits, and guns can even be fired into the air in modern times. The Wassail punch is based on cider (alcoholic, and called hard Cider in the USA) with spirits, fruit, and spiced added and warmed. Beaten eggs could also part of the recipe in some areas, leading to our modern versions of the warmed and spiced drinks, and egg nogs. Wassailing evolved into carol singers going from door to door, singing seasonal songs in exchange for money, drink or food. However, Wassailing the apple trees still exists in the UK today, and is carried out on Twelfth Night in many places. 

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, farm labourers would spend the twelve days of Christmas visiting friends and family in turn, and over-indulging in luxury food and drink where they could afford it. It was a reward for a year of hard work, and light in the darkest time of the year. As the holidays became compressed into a single day, many of the customs evolved in a way that allowed favourite elements to be retained, leading to the traditional Christmas we see today.        

However you celebrate, what you celebrate, and how long you spend enjoying the season, is really a matter of choice and family tradition. I wish you the best for the season and a very Happy New Year.

Happy Everything to Everyone.