Twelfth Night - or whenever

The Twelve Days of Christmas are not reckoned everywhere in the same way. In some regions, Christmas Day is counted as one of their number, in others it is not. If it is, Epiphany is really Thirteenth Day, and in some parts of Europe it is called that.

In England it is usually called Twelfth Day, and its Eve is variously known as Twelfth Day Eve, or Twelfth Night, the latter derived from the ancient custom of reckoning time by nights instead of by days. We still use 'fortnight' that actually means fourteen nights, not fourteen days.

Twelfth Day Revels.

The Vigil and Feast of the Epiphany (January 5th and 6th) are known as Twelfth Night and Twelfth Day respectively because they come at the end of the Twelve Days of Christmas, These are the day's that link the two great feasts of Christ's Nativity and His Manifestation to the Gentiles, and form the heart and centre of the long ecclesiastical Christmas season which runs from Advent (4 th Sunday before Christmas) to Candlemas Eve (1 st February).

All of them still have a festival significance for most people, in spite of the of the modern tendency to limit Christmas and New Year celebrations to a few days only, and once they had much more.

Ephraim Syrus, one of the Fathers of the Eastern Church, knew them as a festal tide in the religious sense as far back as the end of the fourth century, and in A.D. 567 they were declared to be so by the Council of Tours. For ordinary people during many centuries, they were a bright medley of splendid Church holiday, when ceremonies and secular revelry, and an almost continuous work was reduced to a mere necessary minimum, and many customary restrictions were relaxed.

They had also a darker side. Notwithstanding its immense sanctity for all Christian people the Christmas season and especially the Twelve Days, was an uncanny and perilous time. Shakespeare says that then:

... no spirit dare stir abroad;

The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,

No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,

So hallow'd, and so gracious is the time.

and it may be that in the sixteenth century there were some, perhaps many, devout persons who felt that this was true. But the folk-traditions of almost every European country are against him. It seems to have been widely believed that in this dark midwinter period, spirits of many kinds did stir abroad, and not all of them were friendly to mankind.

The Wild Hunt raged across the skies, led by the Devil, or whatever unhappy human soul that was, 'locally,' thought condemned to take their place. Werewolves ran through the woods, the dead returned and fairies and the Will o' the Wisp were active.

In some regions it was considered safer to stay indoors at night, lest by venturing out in the darkness a man might encounter mysterious entities that it was better not to encounter. A faint trace of these once widespread beliefs lingers, perhaps, in the many stories that are still told of ghosts and phantoms that appear at this season and are nearly always ominous of death or misfortune to those who see them.

Nevertheless, if superstitious terrors were part of the pattern of the Twelve Days, so also were feasting and merriment and all the joys of holiday. On Epiphany, or Twelfth Day, that holiday ended with a variety of lively celebrations, some of which still survive in a number of European lands today. In Great Britain, most of the traditional revelries have vanished now, though some old customs are kept up in particular localities, and it is a favourite time for parties everywhere. Formerly, however, it was a high festival occasion here, as elsewhere, both because of the religious importance of the Epiphany itself, and because Twelfth Day provided a kind of 'last fling' before the world resumed its workaday aspect on Plough Monday.

Check with Exeter Cathedral and Devon churches for present day Plough services.

Twelfth Night Fires.

The pre-Christian winter fire festivities were continued on Twelfth Night, the Eve of Epiphany, when fires used to be lit in the fields. Until about the middle of the 19th century, it was customary on that night for the farmer, with his servants and a number of his friends, to go to one of the sown wheat-fields and there, on the highest part of the ground, to light twelve small bonfires and one larger one.

In some areas, these fires were arranged in a straight line, in others, in a circle, but invariably one was bigger than the rest. The men stood round it in a wide ring, and toasted their master, each other, and the coming harvest in cider. Then followed an outburst of shouting and hallowing, which was often answered by similar shouts from other farms nearby, where the same ceremony was being performed. When the fires had burned down, all concerned returned to the farmhouse where a good supper had been prepared for them.

In Herefordshire and the Southwest, there was a further ceremony after the supper had been eaten. The company went to the cattle-byre to wassail the oxen, taking with them a large plum cake with a hole in the centre. The master, standing before the finest ox, toasted him by name in a flagon of strong ale, after which the other men toasted the rest of the oxen, each one separately and by name. This was done in a set form of words, varying a little in different regions.

A version given in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1820 runs:

Here's to thee, Benbow, and to thy white horn,

God send thy master a good crop of corn,

Of wheat, rye and barley, and all sorts of grain,

You eat your oats, I'll drink my beer

May the Lord send us a happy new year.

The plum cake was then hung on the horns of the first ox, which was tickled, touched with a goad, or doused with cider to make him toss his head and throw it off. If he did so of his own accord, without being touched, it was an omen of very good luck to the farm.

Twelfth Night Destiny Cakes (can be used in a 'game' to entertain visitors)

These elderberry funnel cakes are simple fried crullers, made with batter that is passed through a funnel or tube, making amusing, fantastic, or "divination" shapes; money bags, broken hearts, love knots etc, and 'drawn' or 'selected' in some way by those wishing to learn of their future.

3 eggs, well beaten 2 cups milk

½ teaspoon salt 4 cups flour

2 teaspoons, or slightly less, baking powder

½ cup elderberry preserves or plum jam

2 cups vegetable oil for "deep frying" in a fryer

6 tablespoons honey

A funnel or pastry tube with nozzle measuring ½" in diameter

1. Add the salt to the beaten eggs. Stir the eggs briskly into the milk.
2. Stir the baking powder into the flour.
3. Mix most of the milk and the eggs with the flour.
4. Add the elderberry or plum preserves to the mixture.

   If the resulting batter is too thick to run easily through the funnel or pastry tube, add more of the milk and egg mixture.

   If the batter is too thin to hold its shape-the consistency ought to resemble a thick pancake batter-add a small extra amount of flour.

5. Into hot oil in a deep, wide, frying pan, pipe the fruit batter in imaginative shapes, making initials or designs. Fry until golden.
6. Remove from oil. Drain.

Lightly drizzle with honey, and serve each cake warm.

Since Twelfth Night celebrates the end of Christmas and includes added items like Plough Sunday/Monday everything from Advent (four Sundays before Christmas) has some relevance to it, even if it's only taking down the decorations and cards and putting away the link with the fire festivals of old, the Christmas lights off the tree.

Christmas fires and burning faggots, branches held by twelve bindings to make a 'log', generally gave way to candles on trees, still used in Europe. Candles gave way to the electric lights on trees today.

The pagan fire festival survives.

Remember

In 1752 the calendar was changed and people 'lost' eleven days.

To many, this was not acceptable, which is why the tax year ending on Lady Day, 25 th March, suddenly became tax year ending April 5 th when people refused to pay their taxes until then.

The new Twelfth Night = the old Christmas Eve.

To follow 'folklore' faithfully means that we should have to put up with the feasting, ritual, wassailing, festivities and more feasting, twice.

This conveniently takes in the period four weeks before our present Christmas until Candlemas, 2 nd February.

There's more to Twelfth Night than most people imagine.