Twelfth Night, Twelfth Day Eve, Epiphany Eve, Old Christmas Eve

January 5 and 6

Twelfth Night (also known as Twelfth Day Eve, Epiphany Eve, and Old Christmas Eve) has not been celebrated extensively since the mid-nineteenth century. For all that, many scattered reminders of the old revels, and the still older beliefs concerning the festival, have survived to modern times.

Ceremonies of cutting the Twelfth cake, wassailing fruit trees, caroling from house to house for goodies, belief in the miraculous blossoming of thorn or bush, of animals that kneel and bees that sing, are a few of many picturesque customs still associated with the season.

Before the calendar change of 1752, Twelfth Night was celebrated on a gigantic scale. In those days, a Twelfth Night cake was universal. The cake, baked with a bean and a pea inside, was washed down with generous draughts from the wassail bowl, which brimmed with "lamb's wool," or ale, well seasoned with sugar, spices and roasted apple pulp. Friends and relatives assembled, to dine sumptuously and then cut the cake. Whoever found the bean in his portion was proclaimed king of the revel, while the person getting the pea was queen. In modern times the cake, as will be seen, still plays an occasional role in Twelfth Night festivities.

Wassailing the fruit trees is an ancient fertility rite, still practiced on Old Christmas Day in certain areas. As in olden times, the farmer and his helpers carry jugs of cider to the orchards. There, surrounding one of the best-bearing apple trees, they offer toasts to its health.

Some West Country folk who stubbornly adhere to the Old Style calendar, still maintain that Old Christmas Eve is the "true" anniversary of Christ's birth. In Cornwall and Devon, people still say that at midnight oxen, horses, and sheep fall on their knees in adoration of the Christ Child, while in Hampshire and Lancashire, the leaves are said to rustle on trees at twelve o'clock, just as the Holy Thorn bursts into bloom. Bees come singing from hives and all living creatures rejoice in the Sacred Birth. For, as in Shakespeare's time:

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then, they say, no spirit can walk abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallowed and so gracious is the time.