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Summary
- The twelve days of Christmas begin on Christmas Day, 25 December, and end on 5 January, with the Epiphany on 6 January.
- Twelfth Night is the evening of 5 January if you count Christmas Day as the first day; counting from 26 December makes 6 January the twelfth day.
- The first days after Christmas belong to the martyrs: St Stephen on 26 December, St John on 27 December and the Holy Innocents on 28 December.
- On 1 January, the eighth day, Catholics keep Mary, the Holy Mother of God, and Anglicans the Naming and Circumcision of Jesus, the day when “his name was called Jesus” (Luke 2:21).
- The Second Council of Tours, in 567, let monks eat every day from Christmas to the Epiphany “because every day is a festival.”
- The song began as a children’s memory-and-forfeits game, whose earliest known printing is usually dated about 1780; the idea that it hides a secret catechism dates from 1979 and has no historical evidence behind it.
Bibliography (Click to show)
- The Holy Bible, King James Version: Luke 2:19 and 2:21; Matthew 2:11, 2:16 and 2:18; Acts 7:56 and 7:59–60; John 1:14; John 21:20. Text from BibleGateway.
- Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, Liturgy Office, Universal Calendar: December and Universal Calendar: January.
- United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Liturgical Calendar for the Dioceses of the United States of America 2026 and 2027.
- Church of England, Common Worship: The Calendar.
- Orthodox Church in America, Feasts and Saints for 26 December, 27 December, 29 December, 1 January and 6 January.
- Lawrence Farley, “A Papal Calendar?”, Orthodox Church in America, 3 January 2017.
- Second Council of Tours (567), canon 17, Latin text from J. Hardouin, Acta Conciliorum, vol. 3 (1714), col. 355, with C. J. Hefele’s English summary, as given by Roger Pearse, “When to take down the Christmas decorations? A canon of the 2nd Council of Tours (567)”, 4 January 2021.
- Erin Allen, “On the Twelfth Night of Christmas”, Library of Congress blog, 5 January 2017.
- Mirth Without Mischief (London: printed for C. Sheppard, about 1780; the scanned copy dated about 1800), Internet Archive.
- Chris Price, “Is there a deeper meaning behind ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’?”, Catholic News Service, 22 December 2022.
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