Hypnogoria: THE OLDTIME YULETIDE ADVENT CALENDAR

Welcome dear friends back to the Hypnogoria Old-time Yuletide Advent Calendar! It’s time to open Door 20, where T stands for Twelfth Night!

Now many complain that Christmas is far too overblown these days and seems to take up more and more time every year, but if one looks back at Christmas customs of years gone by, you find that up until relatively recently our forebears would have been still celebrating, long after we have finished!

Of course everyone has heard of the Twelve Days of Christmas, but rather than being a kind of stripped down version of advent as we often assume, this festive dozen of days didn't come before what we consider to be Christmas, but turned up afterwards.

For the Twelve Days of Christmas actually begin upon Christmas Day and run all the way through until January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany in the traditional church calendar. And while now we only really remember this older version of the Christmas season in the tradition that we must take our decorations down by Twelfth Night, in the not-too-distant past this day was marked by celebrations of fun and feasting that rivalled Christmas Day itself. And why was such a fuss made of this last day? Well simply because in the old agricultural calendar, it was back to work on the 7th of January, or rather often the nearest Monday after - yes in pre-industrial society you got nearly fortnight off work as standard - and hence Twelfth Night was the culmination of the holiday season, the end of your time off work. However of course in the 19th century as society became more industrial and urbanised, the tradition began to fade, and with the corporatized working cultures of the 20th century not countenancing giving wage slaves twelve days plus off at Christmas time, the Twelfth Night festivities all but died out.

Now as for the best known remaining Twelfth Night tradition that this is the day to take down the Christmas decorations, rather than being some ancient piece of folklore, it would appear to be a more recent invention. Indeed, its part in the Christmas calendar is already in jeopardy, with many folks taking down the decs on New Year's Day, and yet others boxing up the baubles on Boxing Day. However historically speaking in centuries past it was actually traditional to leave the decorations up until 2nd February, and at some points in history our forebears left their halls decked with boughs of holly until Easter! So rather than Christmas expanding every year, all the signs are that it is in fact shrinking, with our holiday period actually becoming shorter in real terms!

However while these old bumper-sized holidays may seem astounding to us now, and the old Twelve Days of Christmas are now only remembered as a song, there are plenty of remnants of the old tradition remaining in folklore and local customs, with many places having their own individual ways of marking Twelfth Night. As many of these festivities were marked with food and feasting, there is a widespread tradition of making a Twelfth Night cake, often with added surprises. We are all familiar with the traditional sixpence (or modern coin equivalent) being slipped into the Christmas pudding, and the Twelfth Night cake has similar attached customs. As Robert Chambers noted in his Book of Days (1869) -

In England, in later times, a large cake was formed, with a bean inserted, and this was called Twelfth-Cake. The family and friends assembled, the cake was divided by lot, and whoever got the piece containing the bean was accepted as king for the day, and called King of the Bean.

However there were variants to this custom too, with other items being added into the mix. For example, in one version if you found a twig in your portion of cake, that meant you were a fool. Over time, these special additions were replaced with trinkets and charms, silver ones if you were well-off, and in the 18th and 19th centuries Twelfth Night cakes became huge elaborate affairs with towers of icing and mounds of toppings. Many scholars hold that as the Twelfth Night traditions began to die out the tradition of adding lucky items to the cake, was enfolded into the lore of the Christmas pud.

Another common piece of Twelfth Night folklore revolves around the Yule log. Traditionally the Yule log was not some chocolate confection, but a huge piece of wood that was placed in the fireplace on Christmas Day. The log would be kept burning throughout the Twelve Days of Christmas, with it often being considered unlucky to let it go out during this time. The log of course was eventually formally extinguished at Twelfth Night, with many regions' lore holding that a portion of it, or sometimes its ashes, was to be kept to light next year's Yule log.

However, folklore is often very local, and hence up and down the British Isles many places have their own individual traditions associated with Twelfth Night. In many areas it is one of the dates in the calendar marked out for some wassailing. Again while this is a tradition we now associate more closely with Christmas, but in older times it was a common feature of Twelfth Night celebrations, most famously perhaps in the counties of England where cider is king. However Wassailing is a tale for another day and another door!