Twelfth Night observed

[shewhomust]

We treat January 6th as Twelfth Night and the end of Christmas: I've been told this is incorrect, but by now it is traditional. So yesterday we took down the cards - which is all the decoration we had - and then we went out to Phantoms at the Phil. I had half expected the event to be cancelled, but that didn't happen, and we tested negative (having decided against the previous night's pub quiz, to be on the safe side), and it had stopped snowing, so out we boldly went.

Phantoms is an event at which cultural historian extraordinaire Gail-Nina Anderson and poet Sean O'Brien plus an invited guest - on this occasion rocket scientist and areographer Simon Morden - tell newly written ghost stories. The definition of 'ghost story' is pretty flexible. Sean has a taste for the macabre and horrific, Simon for the simply fantastic: even Gail, on this occasion - well, her intriguing tale of graves and epitaphs and municipal manoeuvering was the closest of the three to a traditional ghost story, which is to say not all that close. I am not complaining. I was very happy to be back at the Lit & Phil, not in the magnificent library upstairs, but in the more spacious lecture rooms downstairs, and to be told stories.

Afterwards, rather than take our chances with the local restaurants (especially since our favourite has closed) we accompanied S. home, and she warmed up the food we had previously ordered (and she had collected) from her local Italian restaurant. We dined sitting at opposite ends of her enormous table, and helped dispose of the last of her wine store - she observes dry January for the whole period between Christmas and Easter (though she is threatening to declare time on Lady Day this year, as Easter is rather late).

This felt like a workable level of socialising.

Comments

[cmcmck]

It isn't incorrect.

It's Epiphany and that's one version of correct although there is another view based around the change in the calendar.

[shewhomust]

It isn't incorrect.

It's Epiphany...

But is this the same thing? I'm confused about this, though not unduly worried about it!

[sovay]

We treat January 6th as Twelfth Night and the end of Christmas: I've been told this is incorrect, but by now it is traditional.

I think it just depends on when you start counting.

I am glad you had stories.

[shewhomust]

I think it just depends on when you start counting...

Indeed.

I am glad you had stories.

And so am I!

[athenais]

Some of us (me) had never heard of Epiphany or 12th Night or the belief that Christmas Lasts Beyond Christmas Day until we were almost middle-aged. It's nothing I grew up with or around, my family were not mainstream Christians. I really wouldn't have known much about what everyone else believed were it not for singing classical music in choir from the age of 10; you sing the Mass and special church day music enough times, you kind of get the picture.

[shewhomust]

I'm not sure where I learned about these things: certainly not from religious obsservation in the family. Reading lots of historical novels, possibly? And Twelfth Night from Shakespeare ... Oh, and singing about the twelve days of Christmas!