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On The Twelfth Day of Christmas I write this 1/6/2011 6:24:01 AM
Today, January 6th, is the Twelfth Day of Christmas, according to the Christian tradition I follow. It is the Feast of the Epiphany (the celebration of the visit to Jesus by the Magi) and the official end of Christmastide, which begins on Christmas Day. Last night was Twelfth Night, the festive Twelfth Night of Shakespeare’s play, which I spent on my computer instead of engaging in festivities as the characters in Shakespeare’s play quite appropriately did. I didn’t even light the tree. Bah, humbug. Shame on me when across the nation, Hispanics were remembering, laying out presents for their children to open this morning on Three Kings Day.
It took a few years of living in this country to settle down to the fact that Boxing Day, the day following Christmas, would not be a day of recovery from Christmas feasting with more feasting. In Jamaica, where I lived the first 29 years of my life, Boxing Day was a legal holiday, as it is throughout much of the British Commonwealth of Nations. It was the day for visiting friends, delivering presents to those outside the large family circle (I had 21 first cousins) and taking the season’s festivities to the hilt with the large parties traditionally thrown on that day. Boxing Day, also the feast day of Saint Stephen, was fun!
Do I sound as if I’m mourning the loss of Boxing Day? In a sense I am. But it’s more the loss of the Christmas of years gone by. I’m a die-hard traditionalist. My tree won’t be taken down until tomorrow, January 7th when Christmastide is over. I’ll hang on to tradition with my teeth, despite the desecration of the Christmas season - halls being decked before Thanksgiving and trees thrown in the trash at dawn on Boxing Day. Should I have the good fortune to have a suitor come calling this new year, I’ll put him to the ultimate test – a gift for each of the Twelve Days of Christmas. Let’s see if he rises to the challenge of remembering which days those are.
