“On the Twelfth Day of Christmas my true love gave to me twelve drummers drumming…” goes the final verse of the familiar carol. I’m sure that the true love would no longer be my true love if I received such a gift, especially atop all the other gifts of the previous eleven days. Who would want all that noise and commotion at a Christmas celebration?
The gift of the Twelve Days of Christmas, though, I really appreciate.
One year when my children were young and I was a full-time English teacher as well as wife and mother, I discovered that the Lutheran church encourages celebrating the Christmas season from December 25 to January 5, not during the Advent season. Christmas is NOT finished on December 25 as all the secular hoopla over Christmas would have us believe. Instead, the Twelve Days of Christmas just begin on December 25. Despite hearing no more carols on the radio or seeing no more Christmas specials on television, we can continue celebrating Christmas and our Lord’s coming to earth many more days.
This is adapted from “The Twelfth Day of Christmas,” a blog post written by Phyllis Rude that was first published on the Women of the ELCA blog on January 5, 2012.
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