1/5/23
The Twelfth Day of Christmas.
Tonight is Twelfth Night.
Tomorrow, in most parts of the Christian World, is the Epiphany of the Lord.
Here we are, calling it “Twelfth Night,” which is what it’s been called for at least Five Hundred years.
The people celebrate and rejoice, with the encouragement of the civic and ecclesial governors. But not just randomly and raucously. Although reports of seemingly unrelated para-rituals involving elves in dress-up, reindeer and house-calls continue to preponderate. The purpose of counting to Twelve in Christendom has everything to do with the Incarnation and Our Lord making the use, according to his good will and pleasure, of one of his favorite numbers.
There are twelve days from Christmas (inclusive) to the Epiphany (exclusive). Go ahead and count them up—I’ve counted them twelve thousand times, just to make sure. If you include Christmas in the count then you exclude Epiphany, or vis a versa. You can’t include both, otherwise you come up with thirteen. Including Christmas makes sense and accords with scripture telling of His circumcision on the eighth day, which is the Gospel for the Octave of Christmas, January the First.
The Eighth Day is another favorite of the Lord’s. But that’s for another time.
Pinpointing, with the utmost probability, the exact days of these historical realities is beyond the capacities of the best scientists. The cultural History of the Church however has offered these two dates, 12/25 & 1/6. Separately, it seems, at first depending whether you’re from the East or the West. But ultimately, as consolidation happens and the mingling of cultures, we get them both. And probably pretty early than later in the first millennium. This gives everything enough time to become engrained in local custom and thus inexplicable beyond the well worn “we always did it this way.”
