Twelfth Night
As of yesterday, I completed counting down the Twelve Days of Epic Christmas here on the blog—and depending on how you count them, i.e. from December 25th as the first day, or alternatively December 26th as the first day of the Christmas season, either last night or tonight is Twelfth Night. Which got me thinking on what Twelfth Night is all about, other than marking the end of the official twelve days.
The most recent tradition is that Twelfth Night is “officially” when all Christmas decorations should be taken down, with implications of ill luck if this does not occur. In the Middle Ages, Twelfth Night was also associated with the Lord of Misrule, when the established order was turned on its head as part of the holiday celebrations—a tradition I believe may hark back to the Roman Saturnalia, which included similar elements and was celebrated at the same time of year.
Twelfth Night was also the eve of, or synonymous with (depending on how you count those twelve days), the Christian festival of Epiphany on January 6, which commemorates the arrival of the Three Kings at the stable in Bethlehem, following the star that led them to the infant Jesus. (In the Eastern Orthodox Church the celebration also focuses on the adult baptism of Jesus.) In countries such as France and Spain, Epiphany is known as the Feast of the King and is associated with a special cake: in French, galette de les rois. (There are several variants of this cake but the one I tasted was delicious—a kind of pithiviers with frangipane in the centre.)
In some traditions, Twelth Night marked the end of the period of winter festivals that began with Halloween. In others, it marked the beginning of the carnival period that ends with Mardi Gras and Shrove Tuesday. Either way, it is clearly a pivotal time.
The idea of misrule and things being turned upside down is captured in Shakespeare’s play, Twelfth Night, in which the heroine, Viola, disguises herself as a boy, and Sir Toby Belch (like Falstaff) is a classic “lord of misrule” figure.