Thursday, January 6, 2011

Old Christmas Day/ Christmastide Greetings!

Today is Old Christmas Day.


Glass nativity on an old vintage song book.


Songbook open to Joy to the World.



I had rosemary in the arrangement but removed it when it dried out..;-)
Fabric used on the runner are Thimbleberries.



It is the 12th Day of Christmas the day your True Love should have given you all those wonderful gifts and a Partridge in a Pear Tree...;-)

Aunt Dot ,90 yrs old,and my Mama always recalled this from their childhood.
So as long as Mama was with us we would leave up the decor till after Old Christmas Day.
A lot of churches have moved away from it or changed it to fit their modern day needs.


In historical times, days were counted as beginning and ending at sunset (rather than midnight, which required an accurate clock). In that system of reckoning, evenings were the first part of the day, so Christmas day would be considered to begin at sunset on December 24th, and end at sunset on the 25th; therefore, Christmas Eve was originally the beginning of the Christmas holy day. This is why so many traditions have Christmas Eve services.The Twelve Days of Christmas

The “12 Days of Christmas” that we sing about begin on the day after Christmas (a common misconception is that the “12 Days” ends on Christmas). Christmas Day is not included in the “12 Days” because it is a Holy Day, and was considered too sacred for partying and merriment; therefore, the “12 Days” began immediately after Christmas.

Using the old “sunset to sunset” reckoning described above, the “12 Days” lasted from sunset on December 25th until sunset on January 6th, the day of Epiphany (also known as “Twelfth Day” in many traditions). In this reckoning, the evenings of the twelve days begin on the evening before the specified day, so

Twelfth Night is the evening of January 5-6.

This old reckoning has the Church seasons of Christmastide and Epiphany overlapping on January 6th. Many traditions (including our own) choose to have Christmastide end as Epiphany begins. Thus, we celebrate Christmastide until the early morning of the Twelfth Night.

Today (until sunset) is the 12th Day of Christmas.

Can go here and read more if you want too..;-)

Wishing you the 'bestest' day!

Hugs,

Lola

9 comments:

  1. Love your Epiphany decorations. We leave our tree up until after this date...always have...for the reasons you stated. Tonight we have a party at the rector's house for everyone who was involved in music at church over the Christmas season. Thanks for a nice post.

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  2. Your decorations are wonderful! Ours are all down now.
    Micki

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  3. Wow. Thanks for the history lesson. I had no idea. And I've never heard of Old Christmas!
    Amazing how we get used to just going along with the flow...

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  4. I hate to see Epiphany arrive as it means the decorations will now have to come down. I love the quiet peace of that period between Christmas and Epiphany.

    I know what I will be doing tomorrow.

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  5. Very interesting - and beautiful pictures! My department head goes to the Ukrainian Catholic Church so he gets tomorrow off work for Christmas Day. I wonder - should he have had to come in to work on December 25? haha

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  6. Very interesting some of this I had heard before but I learned some new things today.

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  7. OH my--I did not know alot of this before--who says us "old" folks cant' learn something new!!!!!
    I enjoyed this post and learning something new--my mom always took our tree down on New Years day-so that is usually when I do it--maybe next year will be different now thanks to you--thanks for sharing--
    Hugs,Di

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  8. Thanks for sharing all this! It is all new to me too! I love tradtions...
    lv,
    Joy

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Luv hear'in from ya!!