morag wrote: ↑Wed Jan 02, 2019 5:22 pm
bonzo wrote: ↑Wed Jan 02, 2019 4:01 pm
Aw well, tree and decorations down and back to work tomorrow.......... needs must
Always leave ours until Epiphany.
Someone wrote on 3T last week about Miss Wade at St Michael's, and this post reminded me that she once read aloud to us the Christmas traditions as recorded by the writer Hilaire Belloc in the 1920s. I just found it online, and here's the relevant passage:
You must not think that Christmas Day feast being over, the season is at an end, for in this house is kept up the full custom of the Twelve Days, so that 'Twelfth Day', the Epiphany (of January 6th), still has its full and ancient meaning as when Shakespeare wrote. The green is kept in place, and not a leaf of it must be moved until Epiphany morning, but not a leaf of it must remain, nor the Christmas Tree either, by Epiphany evening.
Until very recently, I couldn't understand how you could have a last fling Twelfth Night feast if all the decorations came down on Twelfth Day, but I learned that in olden times, the day of the week was reckoned to begin at sundown, so their Twelfth Night would be to us still the evening of January 5th.