Twelfth Night

We Three Kings of Orient Are. 

Although popularly considered a Christmas carol, this favorite hymn more aptly belongs to tomorrow's celebration of Epiphany.  Epiphany is an important day on the religious calendar, marking the events -- especially, the arrival from the East of the gift-bearing Zoroastrian Magi  -- that opened men's eyes to Christ's divinity.

Insofar as it is still observed at all in our secular society, Epiphany is observed as Twelfth Night.  The last of the twelve days of Christmas (twelve drummers drumming, and all that), it generally marked the final day my family could tolerate the continued presence in our living room of the shriveled remains of our Christmas tree. 

Various countries have different ways of observing the holiday.  In some countries, it is on Twelfth Night -- in memory of the Magi's gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh -- not on Christmas Eve, that gifts are exchanged.  Twelve more days to wait would have been agony for me as a kid.  Many countries have special foods and beverages that are consumed on Twelfth Night.  Wikipedia claims that Carnival begins on Twelfth Night in some countries, and continues until Mardi Gras.  Since Mardi Gras (the day before Ash Wednesday) occurs on February 9 this year, those countries will be celebrating Carnival for more than a full month.

Life is even more exciting in the eastern Alps.  On Twelfth Night, two to three hundred masked young men rush about the streets with whips and bells driving out evil spirits.  Combine this tradition with Brazilian Carnival, and you'd end up with something like the frenzied and frightening activities honoring the god Dionysus in ancient Greece.

Here in Seattle, we pay little attention to Twelfth Night -- to either its religious or its secular aspects.  Trees disappear from houses at various times.  Exterior lighting seems to be staying lit later each year -- most houses that were illuminated at Christmas remain so even tonight.  But one by one, the lights wink out as the days pass.  The music and light of Christmas -- disguising the darkness of the winter solstice -- die away, leaving us to face the dark and gloom of January. 

And yet, our pagan forebears wisely celebrated the solstice as the beginning of the march back to summer.  Already, I sense the days becoming slightly longer, and I realize that the darkest 30 days of the year are now behind us.  Shrubs already were forming buds before Christmas, with the coldest days yet to come.  This past week, puddles and lakes froze over.  It is warmer now, but of course anything can happen when it comes to weather between now and the end of February.

It wasn't much later than this last year that I discovered the first flower opening on what I call the Harbinger Tree -- an early blooming tree of my own discovery on the UW campus.  Within the next couple of weeks, I'll begin watching my Tree anxiously for signs that summer and its hours of sunny daylight are once more headed our way.

Meanwhile, let's not forget, even as we say goodbye to the shining lights of Christmastide and face the dark of winter:

“I say there is no darkness but ignorance.”

--Shakespeare, Twelfth Night