The Holder of this blog uses no cookies and collects no data whatsoever. He is only a guest on the Blogger platform. He has made no agreements concerning third party data collection and is not provided the opportunity to know the data collection policies of any of the standard blogging applications associated with the host platform. For information regarding the data collection policies of Facebook applications used on this blog contact Facebook. For information about the practices regarding data collection on the part of the owner of the Blogger platform contact Google Blogger.

Monday, January 06, 2020

On The Twelfth Day of Christmas…

In this series:


Some assign Twelfth Day to January 5th, it being the mathematically precise twelfth day of Christmas.  Others assign it to the 6th, it being the day those before them celebrated as Twelfth Day.  Careful review of documentary evidence shows that the evening of the 5th was referred to as “Twelfth Eve,” in Medieval and Tudor times, in Great Britain, as the rule, and the 6th as “Twelfth Day”.  The night of the 6th was called “Twelfth Night”.



It is said that Twelfth Day may have been celebrated as Feast of the Kings/Magi, Epiphany, Lesser Christmas or Lesser Epiphany, throughout Europe since the fifth century.  Records show that there were twelve days of Christmas as early as the reign of Alfred.  The nature of celebrating the twelfth day, or its date, however, does not appear.

At least as early as 1190, Epiphany and Twelfth Day are stated off-hand as being the same day.  On the day occurred a

foule northerne brawle, which turned well neere to a fray, betweene the archbishop new elected, of the church of Yorke, and his company on the one side, and Henry, dean of the said church, with his catholike partakers on the other side[1]

The occasion of this great cathedral brawl was the selection of music for Evensong.

Gaufridus or Geoffry, sonne to king Henry the second, and brother to king Richard, whom the king had elected a little before to the archbishopricke of Yorke, upon the even of Epiphany, which we call Twelfe Day, was disposed to hear even-song with all solemnity in the cathedral church, having with him Hamon the chanter, with divers canons of the church, who tarrying something long, belike in adorning and attiring himselfe, in the meane while Henry the deane, and Bucardus the treasurer, disdaining to tarry his comming, with a bold courage lustily began their holy evensong with singing their psalmes, ruffling of descant, and merry piping of organs;…

Cacophony  and riot ensued.  “The next day, which was the day of Epiphany, when all the people of the citie were assembled in the cathedral church,” the Dean and his singers were unrepentant, “exclaiming and uttering contemptuous words against the archbishop and his partakers,” for which “the archbishop then accursed” them.

Twelfth Day celebration might actually begin on Twelfth Eve.  At the end of a  banquet, the Twelfth Cakes were sliced and handed around, one to all men and the other to all the women at the table.  Hidden in the men’s cake was a bean, in the women’s a pea.  Whoever received the portion with the bean was the Twelfth Day King, with the pea was the Queen.  In some times and places the Twelfth Cake was eaten on the day itself.


“On Twelfth-Day, 1563,” that is to say on the day itself, “Mary, Queen of Scots celebrated the French pastime of the King of the Bean at Holyrood, but with a queen instead of a king, as more appropriate, in consideration of herself being a female sovereign. The lot fell to the real queen's attendant, Mary Fleming, and the mistress good-naturedly arrayed the servant in her own robes and jewels, that she might duly sustain the mimic dignity in the festivities of the night.”[2]

The actual monarch him or herself “must go,” in the morning, to offer gold, frankincense and myrrh,  “crowned in his royal robes, kirtle, surcoat, his furred hood about his neck, his mantle with a long train, and his cutlas before him; his armills upon his arms, of gold set full of rich stones: and no temporal man to touch it, but the King himself; and the squire for the body must bring it to the King in a fair kerchief, and the King must put them on himself; and he must have his sceptre in his right hand, and the ball with the cross in his left hand, and the crown upon his head. And he must offer that day, gold, myrrh, and cense; then must the dean of the chapel send unto the Archbishop of Canterbury by clerk or priest, the King's offering that day; and then must the Archbishop give the next benefice that falleth in his gift to the same messenger."[3]

This tradition was continued at least from the reign of Henry VII until George III was too ill to perform it himself.  At that point,

Two gentlemen from the Lord Chamberlain's office [appeared] instead, attended by a box ornamented at top with a spangled star from which they [took] the gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and [placed] them on an alms-dish held forth by the officiating priest.[4]

Prince Albert began the modern practice of presenting 25 new gold sovereigns together with small amounts of frankincense and myrrh in a crimson silk bag in the royal chapel.[5]  Presumably, the original was an established ritual from well before Henry.

No later than Tudor times, church music and miracle plays were replaced, at Court, by secular plays generally acted by cathedral choir boys or the Children of the Chapel Royal.  In particular, during the reign of Elizabeth I, Twelfth Day was a day of mass, wassailing, banqueting and plays, before the holidays came to an end.  Witty young men spoke of drinking “Lambs Wool,”[6] which generally meant something between wassail and cider.  The common folk who could not afford wassail shared in drinking cider which was festive and within the means of all.

As the reign progressed, Twelfth Eve was generally graced with interludes and masques at court.  Occasionally, the Twelfth Day play might be shown on Twelfth Night.  The night plays were acted by adult players.

In 1560, the Court Revels Books show

The 6th, being Twelfth-day, in the afternoon, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, and all the crafts of London, and the Bachelors of the Mayor's Company, went in procession to St. Paul's, after the old custom, and there did hear a Sermon. The same day was a scaffold set up in the Hall for a play; and after the play was over was a fine mask; and after, a great banquet that lasted till midnight.[7]

This is not likely to have actually been a Court-related affair.  Perhaps the mayor borrowed some equipment.  Likely, the mayor and the merchant Company from which he was chosen celebrated the day more-or-less in this fashion most years.

In some areas of England, during the 18th century, towns and villages drank their cider and danced around a bonfire within a circle of twelve lesser fires.  The histories of the Middle Ages sometimes inform us that the 12 days of Christmas were actually 13, if one did the math precisely, because the Christmas was a remembrance of Christ and the other twelve days remembrances one each of the twelve apostles.  The concurrence of these facts suggest that the custom may have gone back many centuries.

And so we, too, come to the end of the Christmas holidays.  In Medieval and Tudor times, January 7th was Plow Day.  The careful husbandman must plow to plant his winter wheat and oats his family stoutly supporting him.



[1] Hawkins, John. A General History of the Science and Practice of Music, I.173.  Citing Fox, John. Acts and Monuments, I. 505. Citing Gervase of Canterbury.
[2] Chambers, Robert. The Book of Days: A Miscellany Popular Antiquities. I.63.
[3] Warren, Nathan B. The Holidays Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide;... (1876). 122-3.
[4] Ibid., 124.
[5] Sheppard, Edgar.  Memorials of St. James's Palace (1894).  II.276.
[6] Presumed to be a demotic pronunciation of “Lamas Ubhal,” the ancient Irish celebration of the god of the apple and other fruits.
[7] Nichols, John. The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth (1823). I.82.


Also at Virtual Grub Street:




No comments: