Christmastide...

What stinks about Christmas is that we roll everything up into one big day.  Now, I love December 25 as much as the next mom, but what I REALLY love is December 26.  Why?  Because it is the first day we can relax and enjoy.

I probably wouldn't enjoy December 26 so much if I had to take down all the decorations by then.  I don't think I'd enjoy the whole week-between-Christmas-and-New-Year's time nearly as much if I hadn't been raised to extend the Christmas season all the way through Epiphany (January 6).  I can't remember a single time when we took the decorations down before January 6. Sometimes we didn't even take the down until Valentine's Day, but that's another blog post. :)

Whoever started the whole tradition that it's bad luck to go into the new year without taking down  Christmas decorations was just nuts.  Everyone knows:  a) there's no such thing as luck, and b) if there were, it all hinges on eating collard greens and black-eyed peas (the food, not the group) with a shiny dime under your dinner plate on New Year's Day. Not that we would ever do all those things in our family...

What was the point of this?  Oh yeah, Christmastide.  Back in the day when everything wasn't riding on December 25, there was a whole season of feasting and gift-giving.  You didn't have to get it all over with in a couple of days; you had twelve days of Christmas to see all the family and friends you wanted to see and find excuses not to see those you just couldn't tolerate.

December 25 was the first day of Christmas.  December 26, the second.  December 27, the third. December 28, the fourth.  December 29, the fifth (Yes, I am going to write all these out.  Then you'll have a handy guide each day to know what "day" you're on.) December 30, the sixth.  December 31, the seventh.  January 1, the eighth.  January 2, the ninth.  January 3, the tenth.  January 4, the eleventh. And January 5, the twelfth.  On January 5th, you'd be having a Twelfth Night feast.  And on January 6, you'd celebrate the Feast of Epiphany.

Since I wasn't around in previous centuries... other than the one immediately before this one, which had already switched to the December 25 system of celebrating... I don't know if you were allowed to have leftovers from the Twelfth Night feast at the Epiphany feast. It's not really an issue around here, as we have teenagers and no matter how much I cook, there's never enough food left over to make another meal for the entire family.

Jimmy's got Christmastide off from work this year.  Well, he's off until January 3, which is when we go back to school anyway.  We're going to attempt to maintain a festive atmosphere here through January 6. I'll let you know how that goes.

In the meantime, we'll have New Year's dinner (or our eighth night feast) at Gramma's.  We only need five more maids and eight cows to make it work.