Until the 1752 calendar change, Jan. 5 was Christmas Eve, and Twelfth Night, sometimes called the Eve of Epiphany, falls on Jan. 5 and precedes the 12th day, which is commonly regarded as the end of the Christmas season.
Actually, according to Christian tradition, Jan. 6 was the day the Wise Men visited the Christ Child. In Tudor England, Twelfth Night was celebrated even more than Christmas in manor houses throughout the country. It was a time for feasting and merrymaking with the Lord of Misrule in complete charge; even the sovereign had to follow his commands, however silly, and some of them were extremely so.
Farmers in Devon, Somerset, would wassail their apple trees on this night, hoping to ensure a good harvest for the next year. This tradition is reflected in the custom of drinking a warm spiced beverage from a wassail bowl and eating a special cake like gingerbread.
Originally gingerbread was a medieval mixture of breadcrumbs, sugar and spices boiled with honey and wine to make a paste that was then shaped and decorated. The name goes back to Middle English when bread was the word for broken bread and loaf was the word for the whole item. Gingerbread being made up of breadcrumbs, the name became an outgrowth of its nature.
Sugar, ginger and spices reached Europe only after a long and heavily taxed journey from the East. These ingredients made gingerbread expensive. Even the white bread used for the crumbs was a luxury.
An original recipe of this kind is translated as follows:
Take good honey and clarify it on the fire, and take fair white bread and grate it, and cast it into the boiling honey, and stir it well together fast with a slice that it burn not to the vessel, and then take it down and put therein ginger, long pepper and sanders and temper it up with thine hands, and then put it in a flat box and strew thereon sugar, and stick therein cloves round about the edge and in the middle if it please you.
This variation of gingerbread likely was used throughout Europe at the time, as evidenced by the ingredient inherent in its German name: "Pfeiffer Kugen," which is translated as pepper cake. Also in Scotland and the North of England, their substantial gingerbread was called "Parkin" and was based on oatmeal.
Gingerbreads molded or cut into fancy shapes have remained popular. Eighteenth-century children were given gingerbread in the form of alphabet letters and animal shapes. In Thomas Hardy's late-19th-century novel "Jude the Obscure," the hero's desire to study at Oxford is lived out by making gilded gingerbread in the shapes of Oxford colleges and churches to sell at fairs.
So we see that the gingerbread people and houses we make at Christmas belong to a tradition of more than 500 years.
Other customs connected with Twelfth Night include the Holy Thorn of Glastonbury: Pilgrims go to Glastonbury Abbey to see the thorn tree that flowers at midnight. Legend says that when Joseph of Arimathea reached there on Christmas Day, A.D. 63, the staff he thrust into the ground miraculously blossomed. Its offshoots elsewhere, particularly at Orcop, Herefordshire, also attract midnight crowds.
Twelfth Night in Ireland is celebrated by the wren boys. These young lads searched the hedges and fields and usually find a poor, frozen bird which they put in a little box and decorate with thorns and holly, then go around knocking on doors singing the wren song and requesting a penny to bury the wren. They are usually invited in for cakes and ale, or buns and tea, whatever the case may be.
In Scotland they celebrate Hogmanay, which takes place on Dec. 31, New Year's Eve, as a time for merriment and a time for Ceilidh (pronounced kay-lee), which is Scottish for party. And what a party it is. Pipers are invited in and people come from far and wide to enjoy shortbread, Dundee cake and all manner of drink. Then, at the very stroke of midnight, the front door is flung open and the back door is locked tight because it's time to let the New Year in-and with it the ancient tradition of First Footing.
Like so many customs, First Footing is a survivor of an earlier age. The First Foot is the first man through the front door on New Year's Day. He should be a dark, handsome young man and be bringing gifts consisting of bread, a piece of coal, salt, a bottle of whisky, Black Bun, a loaf-shaped mince pie with fruit, almonds, spices, brandy and a round shortbread "nipped round the edges" to simulate the sun. This is an old Druid custom.
The reason the First Footer should be slight and dark is because, in the old days, the coasts of Scotland were battered by Viking and Saxon raiders who were all tall and blond. Their traditional gifts were rape, pillage and destruction, and offered a very good reason to keep the back door locked.
The Hoganay celebrations last well into the morning, and Scottish dancing and the sounds of pipes fill the streets. In the early hours the town band goes around playing a good New Year to one and all.
It's a good thing New Year's Day is a pubic holiday in Scotland, because the celebration can leave the average Scot feeling as though he may have run into those Viking raiders. In the North of Scotland, the celebrations go on to Jan. 12, which is the old-time calendar Hogmany.
So you see you can go on celebrating right through to mid-January, and you can even leave your Christmas decorations after having finally put them all in place up until Candlemas, which is sometime in February.
In any case, have a happy, prosperous and safe New Year, and drive carefully.
TTFN till 2007.[[In-content Ad]]
