Twelve Days of
Christmas
The Real 12 Days of
Christmas
Celebrating Christ's birth with saints of the faith during the
actual Christmas season.
EDWIN
AND JENNIFER WOODRUFF TAIT
Sometime in
November, as things now stand, the "Christmas season" begins.
The streets are hung with lights, the stores are
decorated with red and green, and you can't turn on the radio without hearing
songs about the spirit of the season and the glories of Santa Claus.
The excitement builds to a climax on the morning
of December 25, and then it stops, abruptly. Christmas is over, the New Year
begins, and people go back to their normal lives.
The
traditional Christian celebration of Christmas is exactly the opposite.
The
season of Advent begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, and for nearly a
month Christians await the coming of Christ in a spirit of expectation, singing
hymns of longing.
Then,
on December 25, Christmas Day itself ushers in 12 days of celebration, ending
only on January 6 with the feast of the Epiphany.
Exhortations to follow this calendar rather than the secular one
have become routine at this time of year.
But
often the focus falls on giving Advent its due, with the 12 days of Christmas
relegated to the words of a cryptic traditional carol.
Most
people are simply too tired after Christmas Day to do much celebrating.
The "real" 12 days of Christmas are important not just
as a way of thumbing our noses at secular ideas of the "Christmas
season."
They
are important because they give us a way of reflecting on what the Incarnation
means in our lives.
Christmas
commemorates the most momentous event in human history—the entry of God into
the world he made, in the form of a baby.
The Logos through whom the worlds were made took up his dwelling
among us in a tabernacle of flesh.
One of the prayers for Christmas Day in the Catholic liturgy
encapsulates what Christmas means for all believers: "O God, who marvelously created and yet more marvelously restored
the dignity of human nature, grant that we may share the divinity of him who
humbled himself to share our humanity."
In
Christ, our human nature was united to God, and when Christ enters our hearts,
he brings us into that union.
The three traditional feasts (dating back to the late fifth
century) that follow Christmas reflect different ways in which the mystery of
the Incarnation works itself out in the body of Christ.
December
26 is the feast of St. Stephen—a traditional day for giving leftovers to the
poor (as described in the carol "Good King Wenceslas").
As one
of the first deacons, Stephen was the forerunner of all those who show forth
the love of Christ by their generosity to the needy.
But
more than this, he was the first martyr of the New Covenant, witnessing to
Christ by the ultimate gift of his own life.
St.
John the Evangelist, commemorated on December 27, is traditionally the only one
of the twelve disciples who did not die a
martyr.
Rather, John witnessed to the Incarnation through his words,
turning Greek philosophy on its head with his affirmation, "The Word was made flesh,
and dwelt among us" (John 1:14, KJV).
On December 28, we celebrate the feast of the Holy Innocents, the
children murdered by Herod. These were not martyrs like Stephen, who died
heroically in a vision of the glorified Christ.
They
were not inspired like John to speak the Word of life and understand the
mysteries of God. They died unjustly before they had a chance to know or to
will—but they died for Christ nonetheless.
In them
we see the long agony of those who suffer and die through human injustice,
never knowing that they have been redeemed.
If
Christ did not come for them too, then surely Christ came in vain.
In
celebrating the Holy Innocents, we remember the victims of abortion, of war, of
abuse.
We
renew our faith that the coming of Christ brings hope to the most hopeless.
And, in
the most radical way possible, we confess that like the murdered children we
are saved by the sheer mercy of Christ, not by our own doing or knowing.
In the Middle Ages, these three feasts were each dedicated to a
different part of the clergy.
Stephen,
fittingly, was the patron of deacons.
The
feast of John the Evangelist was dedicated to the priests, and the feast of the
Holy Innocents was dedicated to young men training for the clergy and serving
the altar.
The
subdeacons (one of the "minor orders" that developed in the early
church) objected that they had no feast of their own.
So it
became their custom to celebrate the "Feast of Fools" around January
1, often in conjunction with the feast of Christ's circumcision on that day
(which was also one of the earliest feasts of the Virgin Mary, and is today
celebrated as such by Roman Catholics).
The twelve days of Christmas saw similar celebrations of the
topsy-turvy and the unruly. A "Lord of Misrule" was often elected at
Christmas and ruled the festivities until Epiphany.
A schoolboy was traditionally chosen as bishop on December 6
(the Feast of St. Nicholas) and filled all the functions of bishop until Holy
Innocents' Day.
The Christmas season also sometimes saw the "Feast of
the Ass," commemorating the donkey traditionally present at the manger. On
this day, people were supposed to bray like a donkey at the points in the Mass
where one would normally say "Amen."
It is
easy to dismiss all these customs as pagan survivals (which many of them are),
or at best as irrelevant and harmless follies.
Indeed,
the medieval church frowned on most of these practices, and the Reformers of
the 16th century finished the job of suppressing them.
But
perhaps there's a message here worth pondering—that in the words of the
horrified pagans of Thessalonica, the message of Christ turns the whole world
upside down.
In the
birth of Jesus, God has put down the mighty from their seats and exalted the
lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.
Nothing will ever be safe or normal again. In the words of Michael
Card, we are called to "follow God's own fool."
And
yet, paradoxically, this greatest of revolutionaries was not a rebel.
The one
who revealed the surprising meaning of God's Law and turned the tables on human
traditions nonetheless submitted to be circumcised according to the teaching of
Moses.
Finally, on Epiphany (January 6), the celebration of Christmas
comes to an end.
"Twelfth
Night" (as all lovers of Shakespeare know) is the ultimate celebration of
Christmas madness (Shakespeare's play features one of his many "wise
fools" who understand the real meaning of life better than those who think
they are sane).
Epiphany
commemorates the beginning of the proclamation of the gospel—Christ's
manifestation to the nations, as shown in three different events: the visit of
the Magi, the baptism of Jesus, and the turning of water into wine.
In the
Western tradition, the Magi predominate. But in the Eastern churches, Jesus'
baptism tends to be the primary theme.
In the Bucharest subway, children leading lambs walk through the
trains in commemoration of the Lamb of God to whom John pointed.
Orthodox
Christians traditionally have their homes blessed with holy water on or around
this day.
Nowhere
is Epiphany celebrated more joyously than in Ethiopia. Pilgrims from all over
the country converge on the ancient city of Aksum, where they bathe in a great
reservoir whose waters have been blessed by a priest.
Epiphany is often a forgotten festival (although, by the accident
of Edwin's mother's birthday falling on January 5, his very un-liturgical
family preserved the ancient tradition of keeping the Christmas decorations up
until Epiphany).
As the
true end-point of the Christmas season, however, Epiphany sends us into the
world to live out the Incarnation, to witness to the light of Christ in the
darkness.
Following
Jesus, we have been baptized into his death and resurrection.
Whether
we are called to martyrdom, or to prophetic witness, or simply to faithful
living in the joys and sorrows of our daily lives, we live all of our days in
the knowledge of our dignity, redeemed through Christ and united to God.
We are part of the strange society of people whose world has been
turned upside down, and we go out to witness to this topsy-turvy truth: "The
Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us: and we beheld his glory … and of his
fullness have we all received, and grace for grace" (John
1:14, 16).
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