The twelve days of Christmas

These are notes for celebrating the twelve days of Christmas. If anyone would help by using the Word Track Changes feature and sending me the improved file, I would be most grateful. At some point, I hope to tidy this up. I’m posting this on the web at [1] and [2]

Much of this is unattributed quotation, cut and pasted from various websites (especially Wikipedia). I have not tried to make this scholarly, only useful.

The pictures are important. Look at them as part of the celebration. I have chosen these items to be useful for both children and adults, and with an eye for the participation of the illiterate (my four-year-old, in particular). Adults can look at pictures and do drawings just as children can.

A first point. The period before Christmas is called Advent. The period after Christmas is called Christmastide, or the Twelve Days of Christmas. Professors (of which I am one) and their students find Advent one of their busiest times of year, rather like a farmer’s harvest time. Christmastide, though, is the perfect time for us to celebrate Jesus’s birth.

1. December 25. The Feast of the Nativity. Christmas Day.
1. December 25. The Feast of the Nativity. Christmas Day.
2. December 26. Boxing Day. The Feast of St. Stephen.
3. December 27. The Feast of St. John.
4. December 28. Childermas. The Feast of the Holy Innocents.
5. December 29. Sir Robert Boyle’s Day.
6. December 30. The Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
7. December 31. Dr. John Wycliffe’s Day. St. Sylvester’s Day. The Apodosis.
8. January 1. New Year’s Day. The Feast of St. Basil.
9. January 2. The Day of V. S. Azariah, Bishop of Dornakal.
10. January 3. The Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, St. Genevieve’s Day.
11. January 4. The Day of James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh.
12. January 5. Missionary Robert Morrison’s Day. Twelfth Night. The Paramony.

January 6. The Feast of the Epiphany.