Tag: 12 days of Christmas

JANUARY 5: Twelfth Day, Twelfth Night

Posted on by Richard Daybell

Here we are — the last day of Christmas, number twelve, the big climax.  And what a thundering climax for True Love.  We already have milking maids, dancing ladies, leaping lords, piping pipers and all those birds.  And now twelve drummers drumming, furiously wielding those drumsticks on snare drums, bass drums, tomtoms, steel drums, bongos even.  For Scrooge, it’s an anticlimax; the twelfth ghost of Christmas made it clear that Scrooge was not off the hook, that he would be seeing more ghosts come Valentines.  Scrooge was nevertheless relieved.  He went to his window and called down to a passing boy “What day is it?” “It’s night, you old fool. Twelfth night.” “What a clever boy.  Does the poulterer still have that great big turkey?” “How should I know?” “Quick, run and see and fetch it for me.” “It’ll cost you.” “What a lad.”  The boy returned a few minutes later.  “The turkey’s gone, so I brought you something else instead.”  “What my boy?” “There’s seven swans a-swimming, six geese a-laying, five . . .”

Night Falls

Twelfth Night is a celebration.  Traditionally, once everyone is pleasantly plastered, they all head out into the fields where they toast oxen and trees and rocks until they get cold and decide to go back inside only to find that they’ve been locked out and will not be admitted until they sing a few songs. Those that don’t sing freeze to death. Everybody else goes back inside where they divide up a cake that someone has baked a bean into. Whoever gets the bean gets to be King or Queen of the Bean and boss everyone around.

Then they watch a little Shakspeare, a play coincidentally called Twelfth Night or Whatever.  In it, Viola and Sebastian, twins, have been shipwrecked, and each thinks the other has drowned. Viola disguises herself as a man, Cesario, and goes to work as a servant for the Duke, Orsino.

Orsino loves Olivia, but she’s mourning her dead brother and has no time for Orsino. He sends Cesario (Viola)  to woo Olivia on his behalf. But Olivia falls in love with Cesario who is really Viola.  Viola (Cesario) meanwhile has fallen in love with Orsino  So at halftime, Viola loves Orsino, Orsino loves Olivia and Olivia loves Cesario who is Viola.

Sebastian (remember him?) returns.  He meets Olivia. She thinks he’s Cesario and asks him to marry her, and he says okay.  So at the homestretch, we have Olivia and Sebastion and Cesario and — well, let’s just say they all live happily ever after.  Especially the revelers who have all passed out.

And the twelve drummers finally stop drumming.

January 1, 2024: Deconstructing the New Year

Posted on by Richard Daybell

It’s a new year, a new beginning, a fresh start and all those cliches.  It’s a cold slap in the face after last night when you celebrated and then made that resolution while licking the wassail bowl dry.  You don’t remember?  Your resolution went something like this:  I hereby resolve to read Wretched Richard’s Almanac every day so that I might be well informed, sophisticated and attractive. And I will recommend it to all my friends so they too might be well informed, sophisticated and attractive.

Here Come Januarius

As we previously pointed out, today is January 1, New Year’s Day, the start of a brand new year. It wasn’t always thus. There wasn’t always a January. According to legend, the first calendar was created by Romulus who along with his twin brother Uncle Remus founded Rome. This calendar had only ten months (these were leaner times), the ten being Martius, Aprilis, Maius, Innius, Quintilis, Sextilis, Aquarius, Donner, Blitzen, and the ever-popular Decembris.

The year consisted of only 298 regularly scheduled calendar days. The authorities would add bonus days here and there as they saw fit to bring the total number to the magic 365. (Martius 3, a Tuesday, will be postponed so we can bring you a special wear-a-toga-to-work day. Martius 3 will return on Thursday.)

A fellow by the name of Numa Pompilius (no need to memorize his name)  succeeded Romulus who had murdered Uncle Remus in a typically Roman display of sibling rivalry.   In an effort to Make Rome Great Again, Pompilius added two months to the Roman calendar. The first of these was Januarius, dedicated to the two-faced god Janus, the deity who presided over doors, looking back through the doorway to the past and ahead to the future. Clever, what?

More Wolf-monat, Van Helsing?

Wolf contemplating a Saxon snack

The Saxons (the Almanac is a big tent, they’re welcome too) didn’t hold much with naming things after Roman gods. They had a different and more colorful name for the month of January — Wolf-monat or Wolf-month, because Saxon folks were more likely to be devoured by wolves during Wolf-monat than at any other time of the year.  But we digress.

Et Tu, Sosigenes

Even though Januarius was added some 600 years earlier, New Year’s Day was celebrated on Januarius 1 for the first time in 45 B.C. On that day the Julian calendar went into effect — created by Julius Caesar himself — with the aid of his trusty sidekick Sosigenes, an Alexandrian astronomer.

Sosigenes advised Caesar to dump the whole Roman calendar and start from scratch. New Year’s no longer came in March. A one-time bonus of 67 days was thrown in, with the promise of an extra day every four years in February.

But Caesar couldn’t stop there. In 44 B.C. (that’s a year later than 45), he changed the month of Quintilis to Julius (July, to friends). He would no doubt have done more damage had not a group of noble Romans assassinated him that same year.  But didn’t Augustus come along and keep fiddling with the calendar. (There’s something about Caesars and fiddling.). Sextilis became (what else?) Augustus. But it only had 30 days, compared to Julius’ 31.  What’s a Roman emperor to do?  Steal a day from Februarius, of course.

. . .And on the Eighth Day

For those folks who just can’t get enough ’tis the season, today is also the eighth of a dozen days of Christmas.  This is infamously celebrated by the carol in which on this day, the first day of Christmas, someone’s True Love bestows upon him or her a gift of a partridge in a pear tree.  While we might point out that a crock pot or a circular saw would be a bit more practical, we won’t quibble with the sentiment.  A flock followed: turtle doves, French hens, colly birds, geese, swans, all calling, clucking, cooing and squawking around that pear tree.

But now on the eighth day, True Love, having at last run out of feathered friends, has created an entirely new category of giving — the gift of people. The first contribution to this premise consists of eight maids a-milking, a lovely gift with nary a cackle or a caw. Of course this requires the addition of cows — one can’t very well expect the recipient to go out and find his or her own cows (True Love could have added a disclaimer of cows not included, but that would be a cheap trick.) We suppose there might be just one cow with all the maids milking it, but that would be one very sore cow.

Charles Dickens, it would seem, missed the Christmas boat by failing to take advantage of this twelve day gimmick.  Imagine if you will the twelve ghosts of Christmas.