The culture has wrestled the “12 Days of Christmas” away from the Church. Let’s take those days back. Honestly, we NEED 12 Days of Christmas.
Confusion
We all know the phrase because of the song. You know: from the ground-nesting seed-eating bird somehow stuck in a fruit tree, to the extremely large percussion section.
We are made even more familiar with the phrase by annual marketing efforts: 12 days of bargains and that kind of thing. In this the Holy Birth of Christ gets twisted around in multiple ways.
- First, the purpose of Christmas is turned into buying and selling.
- Second, the 12 days are mistakenly moved backward into Advent.
Clarity
So to end all confusion let me say that December 25 is Day #1 of Christmas. The 12 days take us up through January 5.
The next season of the Church year begins with Epiphany on January 6.
Three Reasons We NEED 12 Days of Christmas
We really need the full 12 days of Christmas. I’ll give you three reasons. I hope you’ll add your own in the comments.
1. The birth of Christ is far too big a deal to celebrate with just one day. This is the day when God the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Christmas is the beginning of God’s restoration of humanity, and of all creation.
That deserves more attention — especially when Christmas day festivities will not leave room to contemplate the mystery. (I posted earlier this week on the great mystery of Christmas. Check it out!)
2. By keeping the full 12 Days, Christians mark the genuinely Christian celebration. In our culture, Christmas as a day of gifts and gatherings has expanded well beyond those who care at all for Jesus. That is perfectly fine. I have to think God loves both joy and giving. He’s probably happy to have inspired it.
But Christians need that and more. By finding ways to mark the whole season of Christ’s coming, we remind ourselves of what is true and we quietly bear witness to the Truth.
3. In pragmatic terms, your kids will be much better off with 12 Days. I don’t mean they get more stuff. I’m saying they are better off spreading the stuff across a couple of weeks.
- A lot of families go a bit overboard with the gift giving. If we have the financial means to give gifts, parents tend to give more than one thing to each kid. Then there are gifts from grandparents, who also have come across more than one choice item. And Aunts and Uncles. Possibly teachers. Maybe school friends. Other friends. You see where this is going.
- My early Christmas memories are of opening everything all at once. Sure, it was a rush, seeing all of those new toys. But it went by so fast I couldn’t even remember who to say “Thank you!” to.
- And then it was done. After a greedy glut of a Christmas morning, Christmas afternoon could be downright depressing.
Now that we have kids of our own, we ration out the presents. There is time to enjoy each one before moving on. One time when the kids opened up a marble run game the whole family stopped for an hour or so building complicated towers and machines to roll the balls through. We just enjoyed it.
It is better. It is saner.
And there are still things for them to look forward to, all the way to January 5.
Do you know the origins of the 12 days?
In the east, the Fast of the Nativity is a 7-day feast, like other major feasts of Christ (the exception, of course, being Pascha), and has its Leavetaking (Apodosis) on December 31st. (Though the full season is more than just the Nativity, it includes Theophany, and it runs much longer…see below.)
Celebrating the Feast of the Nativity for 12 days would be a problem for the Orthodox Church as the day before Theophany, or Epiphany, which is the west’s 12th day of Christmas, is a strict fast day to prepare for Theophany (which is the celebration of Christ’s baptism, and the revelation of the Trinity durign that event).
The full festal Period for the Orthodox goes like this:
November 15th – December 24th, Advent – 40 days of fasting to prepare for the birth of Christ
December 25th – The Feast of the Nativity
December 26th – Synaxis of the Theotokos, who bore Christ
December 27th – Third Day of Christmas and celebration of the first Martyr, Stephen
December 29th – Holy Innocents, slaughtered by Herod
December 31st – The Return of the Nativity Feast, or the Leavetaking, or Apodosis of the Feast
January 1st – the Circumcision of Christ (not a major feast so not celebrated for 7 days)
January 2nd – 4th – Forefeast of Theophany
January 5th – The Paramoni (Preparation Day) Strict Fast Day for Theophany
January 6th – Theophany
January 14th – the Leavetaking, or Apodosis of Theophany
So, if you’re disappointed that the Orthodox Church only celebrates the Nativity for 7 days, the bright side is that the full season (Nativity/Theophany) is much longer in the Orthodox Church, going until mid-January!
Thanks Fr. Dustin. I’ve always assumed that the origin of the 12 days in the West is simply that it views Christmas as a season that begins with Nativity and ends the day before Epiphany.
We were talking this year in my house about “Gift fatigue,” which we described as being that feeling of being so wonderfully blessed that you get tired of opening those blessings and start seeing them as burdens. It seems so extremely in conflict with what Christmas really is. For my own birthday, I celebrate birthday week and birthday month so that I have that whole period to spend time with various people I care about and not trying to cram that into one miserable day of rushing around. I never thought to do the same with celebrating the birth of Christ though. Thanks for this post to ponder!
Thanks Jenni! Great to hear from you. “Gift Fatigue” indeed. Even if it stretches our over several days the fact that gifts are often objects can become a burden. Where to put them?
Thank you. Thank you. My reasons for needing more than one day or even the Christmas Eve, Christmas Day is that though there are only the two of us, there are many services and musical events my husband must prepare and participate in. It seems a rush. This year, we decided to do no gifting at all, (to each other). A lot of thought and many reasons behind it, but that is for another day.
My main reason for enjoying the Christmas Season is the same as your #1. I simply cannot process it all in one day, or one or two or even 3 services. There are so many special aspects of this event that provoke me to ponder at it’s method, timing, place, preceding choices, following events, as well as the absolute miracle that the God of the universe, betrayed by humankind, would chose to place himself as fully God, yet helpless infant into the very hands of the beings that caused the cosmic coup – blows my socks off. I need 12 days and then some. My other main reason is that because in the west it is celebrated in the dead of winter (though I personally do not believe that is when it actually occurred), I find that the darkness of the season is only alleviated by the light of Christ. But hey, may be that is just me. Good to see your posts again, I was missing them for a while.
Here “down-under” Christmas is celebrated at the beginning of the annual summer holidays, so most workers will take holidays between Christmas and New Year, usually returning to work about the 5th January or even later. Some businesses (including my employer) shut down for 2-3 weeks over this period. This longer break makes it easier to spread the celebration for those who wish to do so.