This is the 12th and final day of Christmas. This is the day when every true love gives their true love 12 Drummers Drumming, which is understood by some good Christian folk to symbolize the 12 points of the Apostle's Creed.
In the Bible, 12 is associated with the perfection of order and government. For example, God chose 12 tribes of Israel, and Jesus chose 12 apostles.
In ancient civilizations, 12 represented the completion and integrality of a thing. It's also associated with the heavens, such as the 12 months of the year, the 12 signs of the zodiac, and the 12 stations of the moon and sun.
In some religions, 12 expresses the Divine Mother.
The number 12 is also significant in other ways, including:
In Ancient Greece, the 12 Olympians were the principal gods of the pantheon.
A clock face is divided into 12 hours.
A dozen is a common unit of measurement for items like eggs.
The average human has 12 ribs.
A foot is made up of 12 inches.
Had enough? Yeah, me too.
I love all the symbolism but I also love what the Atlantic’s Olga Khazan dubbed “12 Days of Christmas Diet". She sums up:
"If you ate all of the birds in one day, including the pheasant pie, but not including all the trimmings for the other dishes, and subtracted the energy you expended milking, dancing, leaping, and drumming, you’d have consumed 2,384 net calories. That’s really not bad, considering the average American Thanksgiving dinner adds up to about 4,500 calories."
12th Night means that it's the eve of Epiphany, the official end of the Christmas holiday season, and the day on which many people take down their Christmas decorations or risk bad luck for the coming year.
Poet Robert Herrick wrote: "Down with the rosemary, and so / Down with the bays and mistletoe; / Down with the holly, ivy, all, / Wherewith ye dress'd the Christmas Hall."
There is, of course, Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night, which features many of the traditions of this day which involve pranks, role reversals, and general chaos. Servants dressed as masters, men dressed as women, and people roamed the streets in gangs, decked out in costumes and blackened faces.
In some parts of England, Twelfth Night was also traditionally associated with apples and apple trees. People would troop out to their fruit orchards bearing a hot, spiced mixture of cider and ale for the "wassailing of the trees."
English settlers in the Colonies brought the Twelfth Night tradition with them. In colonial Virginia, it was customary to hold a large and elegant ball. George and Martha Washington didn't usually do much for Christmas except attend church, but they often hosted elaborate Twelfth Night celebrations. It was also their anniversary; they'd been married on January 5, 1759.
It wasn't until the mid-1800s that Christmas became the primary holiday of the season in America, and at that point, Twelfth Night celebrations all but disappeared.
Pity, I think. Christmas Day has become a commercialized event, with the emphasis being on how much Americans spend on gifts for everyone.
Today, in church, we get to celebrate the Epiphany. I'm preaching at 8 AM but at 10 AM, the kids and those members of the congregation who are "young at heart" will present an Epiphany Pageant.
I love this bit of Christmastide best. Maybe because it's the last bit of Christmastide but I love that we get to remind ourselves one more time of the story on which all the other stories of our faith hinge: The Incarnation.
I mean, if we didn't believe that God - the Divine Cosmic Intelligence, the Creator of the Universe - deigned to robe Godself in human flesh and come among us so that we could learn about the Ways of God and God could learn more about the ways of being human, then, well, nothing else matters.
Not all the miracles - because then, Jesus would have just been a clever musician or, perhaps, a skilled physician.
Not all the wise sayings - because then, Jesus would have simply been yet another wise person or a prophet.
Not the resurrection - because then, that would have just been another magic show that lots of people claimed to be able to do at that age and time.
No, the key element in all of the stories of our faith rests right here, on the miracle of the Incarnation.
And, as the tag line goes, The Wise Still Seek Christ.
I hope something good happens to you today.
Bom dia.
Image: ‘Women with Birds’ by Emily Balivet, 2006
https://www.emilybalivet.com/Twelve_Women.html
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