January 2, 2008

With many of us returning to work today, it may seem natural to treat New Year's Day as the end of the holiday season. It seems we have shifted the seasonal festival earlier than in centuries past. Ancient celebrations of Christmas festivities lasted twelve days, mimicking even more ancient, pre-Christian seasonal festivals.

The most common method of counting the 12 Days of Christmas begins with Christmas and ends with the Eve of Epiphany as Twelfth Night. By that method, today brings ninth day of Christmas.

Tips for the day

Even if you return to work today, think about ways you can maintain the tradition of honoring the entire 12 days. Perhaps you can light a candle at work or when you return home. Perhaps you will resolve to keep your holiday decorations up until Epiphany. Or take down only a little at a time, to extend the season for a few more days.

Or perhaps you can find symbols of winter to honor in these last of the 12 days. Today could be a day to honor snow. Legend has it that midwinter snow is really the feathers that have been shaken from Mother Holle's bedspread.

Holy Holla, in the heavens,
A snowy featherbed you're shaking —
Bless the earth with your white blanket,
Moist the mantle you are making.
— Diane Paxson