All Twelve Days of Christmas

When I was a school girl at Saint Mary’s Hall, an Episcopal private school in San Antonio, Texas, we high school piano students would play for daily chapel. We were allowed to choose any hymn from the 1940 Hymnal most of the time. But our chaplain, the Rev. Roy Strasburger, would always ask us not to choose Christmas carols during Advent. Christmas vacation usually started more than a week before Christmas and lasted until after January 1, and all of us students wanted to sing Christmas carols once December rolled around. So we would usually throw in an Advent hymn or so that first week, and then it was Christmas Carols all the way till vacation, our chaplain’s request notwithstanding.

But he did give me my first understanding of Advent as separate from the Christmas celebration, Presbyterian as I was at the time. We all know the stores start decorating and playing Christmas music about Thanksgiving time, a situation many of us church people have often decried. But it has been my experience as an organist-choir director, Sunday school teacher, and then priest and rector in the Episcopal Church that most Episcopalians actually want to celebrate Christmas long before Christmas Eve, no matter what the church calendar says. Indeed, a November message from the Diocese of Louisiana lists five services of Lessons and Carols, all held between December 5 and 17, well before Christmas Eve, the day the original service was launched in 1880, and still is held, at King’s College, Cambridge.

It would be futile, I believe, to insist that we stop doing Christmas services in Advent. That’s not going to be a winning tack. We can, however, reclaim the old practice of celebrating Christmas during the entire 12 days of the Christmas season right up through January 5, or Twelfth Night, the Eve of the Epiphany. Many traditional Latin societies actually do that, reserving the giving of gifts until January 6 to commemorate the gifts that the three wise men brought to the baby Jesus.

After all, it surely took them at least 12 days to reach Jerusalem and find out where to go from there by inquiring of evil King Herod, who didn’t know but had to ask his wise men. So finally, they arrive in Bethlehem, with the star leading them all the way, and find Mary and the baby in a house, not a stable. It makes sense that the holy family would find better lodging in the days after the child was born, so that fits with the timeline. In France they serve gallette des Rois (cake of Kings) on January 6 in honor of the three wise kings, and in New Orleans, from Epiphany to Fat Tuesday they serve King cakes wherein a plastic baby is concealed for the wise folks today to look for.

We can reclaim the whole 12 days to offset the overshadowing of Advent. Save your annual Christmas party until the Feast of Stephen (Dec. 26,) and sing “Good King Wenceslas” in parts — men get to be the King, women or children the page. Celebrate on the Feast of the Holy Name, January 1, recalling that both Mary and Joseph were given the name of Jesus for the child by an angelic visitor. Sing Christmas carols around the piano every evening before or after dinner, and sing “The Twelve Days of Christmas” too.

We can hold back some presents to be given on Twelfth Night, the Eve of the Epiphany. We can have a burning of the greens on that night as well, when we take down the “boughs of Holly” and fir that have decked our halls since December 24 (or longer, of course) and merrily throw them into a fireplace or a barbeque pit or chimenea. Our regrets and sorrows of the old year can go up in smoke, along with our prayers for comfort and joy in the new year — a much better time for such rituals than the Labor Day “Burning Man” ceremonies of New Mexico and Nevada, in my opinion.

Lengthening our Christmas celebration to the traditional 12 days gives us precious leisure after the huge rush to get everything done by the 25th. That’s important time to retell the story of the Incarnation at home — to talk about what the various beloved carols mean, reread the Christmas books we bring out each year to our kids or grandkids, ponder the part each person played in the Gospel accounts, and renew our sense of wonder and joy without the pressure of just one day to get it all done.

Try it this Christmas! That’s the evening of December 24 though January 5 of the bright New Year of our Lord!