The Twelfth Day of Christmas
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| Two drumsticks. That's enough! |
Original Gift: Twelve Drummers
Drumming
South African Gift: Two
drumsticks of course, for my drummer boy
Price: R180
Food: Chicken drumsticks
Saint: St. John Neumann
Scripture: Matthew 2 again (you can get a free copy of the English
Standard Version Bible on Kindle)
Activity: Back to work
On the twelfth day of Christmas my
true love gave to me, twelve drummers drumming.
This must be my favourite of the 12 Days of Christmas (apart perhaps from
Christmas Day) because of all the intrigue, traditions and literature related
to it. I’ll start with the most uninteresting and work my way up though.
For this last day, the song is said to reference the twelve points of the Apostle’s
Creed. I had to go look this up to see it’s the same creed we used to
repeat in what I always thought was an eerie Gregorian-like chant in the church
I grew up in. The only difference is ours of course did not profess a belief in
the Catholic Church, but rather a holy, Christian church (I find it hard to
believe the Apostles specified the Catholic Church).
Speaking of Catholic – the saint for the day is John Neumann. He was a
Bohemian priest who passed away on the 5th of December 1860. I assume
this is why the day was dedicated to him. In my humble opinion though, and not
to lessen Mr Neumann’s good work, there were a couple of people this day really
should have belonged to. The
Magi.
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| One gift. Three trees. Pictures don't always tell the full story. |
As mentioned before, the Bible doesn’t state that there were three wise
men. There were simply three gifts. It also doesn’t state where or who or what
they were. They were wise, and they followed a star. That leads many to believe
that they could have been astrologers. Others also believe that they could have
been kings.
Whatever the facts to this intriguing account, it is their visit to the
baby Jesus, or the Epiphany,
that marks the twelfth and last day of Christmas. Others choose to celebrate the day John the Baptist
baptized Jesus as the Epiphany. Both can be considered the day that Jesus was
revealed as the Son of God and saviour to both Jews and Gentiles. From there we have Epiphany Sunday on the
Sunday closest to the 5th of January, followed by the taking down of
the Christmas decorations and Plough Monday when
everyone gets back to work.
But not before we celebrate the end of Christmas with a party! The Twelfth Night
celebrations where they played games (This is the celebration Shakespeare’s
Twelfth
Night, or As You Will was written for.) and ate lots of treats. One of
these, the most well-known of the Christmas foods, ironically hails from the
end of Christmas. The Christmas Cake, or King’s Cake…
…or Plum or Coin Pudding… or Panettone, Stollen…. Etc. During these
festivities beans, coins or other tokens would be baked into the cake, crowning
the person who bit into it “king” or “queen” for the night. Of course there
would also be dancing and drinking…
So on that note, here’s to the
guys who in all likelihood, as T.S. Elliot puts it in The Journey of the Magi,
had a hard time of it and such a long journey in the worst time of year. Yet would
do it again for a new dispensation. The guys who honoured the new King and deceived
the old.
“Jesus was born in the town of Bethlehem in Judea during the time when
Herod was king. After Jesus was born, some wise men from the east came to Jerusalem.
They asked people, ‘Where is the child who has been born to be the king of the
Jews? We saw the star that shows he was born. We saw it rise in the sky in the
east and have come to worship him’… Then Herod said (to them)… ‘Go and look
carefully for the child. When you find him, come and tell me. Then I can go
worship him too’… The star went before them until it stopped above the place
where the child was… But God warned the wise men in a dream not to go back to
Herod. So they went home to their own country a different way.” - Matthews
2: 1-2, 7-9, 12
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